Strawhat's Red
by grandy12
Summary: Your average crossover where a character falls from the sky into the Grand Line, and this time, that's-a him. I'd say 'better than it sounds' but I am extremely biased on that subject. Rated T because swearing.
1. Chapter 1

He was falling. In slow motion. Or at least it felt like slow motion to him, slightly dazy, and with debris from the explosion all around him. It probably had to do with the recent blow to the head.

If he were honest to himself, he sometimes thought he must be crazy. Then again, can a crazy person know they are crazy? Isn't that the whole point of being crazy, that you don't realize so? I mean, once you… oh right, falling to his death, yes, priorities.

Not that he was worried. It may be due the daze, or the fact he really was, as he sometimes thought, crazy, but it most likely was just because, after a point in his life, he began to take things in stride. One day you are at home, back in the old country, listening to your papa's made up stories. The next day you are chasing royalty through space. That's life for you.

Of course, the first few months after falling into that pipe were… not quite as easy on his mind. It is unsettling for any Italian teen to be cheerfully greeted by a thing that by all means should have no mouth. Worse yet was finding out it was an one-way trip down the rabbit hole, since re-entering the sewer pipe only led him back to where he first exited.

In some ways, he was glad papa and mama had passed on by then. It was a terrible thought, but he knew he would never be at peace at night thinking how worried they must be for him and his brother.

But after you spent long enough down the rabbit hole, wonderland starts getting same old same old. Magic talking bean people? Been there. Having a race over the rainbow? Done that. Chase royalty through space while rescuing sugar-high baby stars from turtles? Bought the shirt. After a decade of living in his new home you sort of zoned out of the 'logic' stuff. Hell, he could remember that time where he didn't twice before jumping inside a painting hanging in the wall and it worked. After that, a planetary hopscotch was nothing he couldn't handle with ease.

Well, for a certain amount of 'ease', the voice in the back of his head chipped in, while the gravitational pull of the globe intensified. He was fairly sure he hadn't landed on this planet before; too huge. Almost the size of-

And then he lost consciousness.

* * *

"Lightning?! It was hot just a second ago!" Nami, the navigator of the Strawhat Pirates, looked surprised through a window. "And now it's snow?!" It was her first experience with Grand Line weather patterns, and it was as inconsistent as she'd heard. Of course, hearing is a thing and seeing is another.

From behind her, the two people she'd come to think of as "The Freeloaders" frowned. One of them wore a crown and had two 9s tattooed on his cheeks. The other was female and had long, blue hair tied up in a ponytail. She was the first to speak, bluntly:

"You really seem like an amateur. Have you even checked your Log?"

"Yeah, I checked it just a while ago…" Nami looked at the compass-like object tied to her wrist and promptly kicked open the door to the deck of the ship, where the crew was making snowmen. "WE HAVE TO TURN BACK 180 DEGREES!"

Luffy, the captain, looked up at her with one brow raised, halfway through the act of putting a carrot on a snowman.

"Eh? You forgot to poop before leaving?"

He was immediately hit on the face by a snowball.

"AS IF! We are going in the wrong way! I looked away from the Log Pose for a second and we already seem to be heading in the complete opposite direction!"

From behind her, the freeloaders sneered and went into a tirade about how much of a newbie she was at this and how much better they were at her job, at which point she promptly kicked them into the deck.

"If you two have time to brag, then steer!" Nami turned back to the crew "Usopp, go to the back and keep watch! Sanji, you control the rudder!"

"Whatever you tell me, Nami-swan~!"

There was a gust of warm wind from her left, even though it had been snowing. Soon after, a giant wave nearly turned the ship.

"Hot air, now?! Stop changing already!"

In the deck, Usopp ran up to Zoro, who was loudly snoring on top of a barrel. Against his best judgment, he put both hands on the swordsman's shoulders and shook violently.

"OI, ZORO! WAKE UP! WE HAVE AN EMERGENCY!"

The swordsman grumbled something incomprehensible and changed his pose slightly, but made no effort to remedy the situation. Suddenly, Luffy let out a scream:

"OI! NAMI!"

Nami turned worriedly to look at the captain.

"What?!"

Luffy was smiling and pointing excitedly to the horizon.

"There is a dolphin over there! Can we go see it up close?!"

"THIS IS NOT THE TIME FOR THAT!"

The ship was again thrown sideways, and the weird climate of the Grand Line started getting, well, weirder. Soon orders were being yelled and obeyed, and the air filled with a jumbled mess of sentences;

"The waves are getting stronger!"

"Nami-swan, there's fog over here!"

"I think we hit an iceberg back there!"

"There is a leak starboard!"

"Would someone just punch that shitty moss head awake?!"

"Is that a typhoon?!"

"Oi, what's up with this heat?!"

"The route is changing again!"

"H-hey Nami, I think I can see- *THUD*

The last sound was of something blunt falling into someone's head, specifically, a yellow box, on Usopp's.

"B-boxes, now?" Nami turned to the freeloaders who, as much as she hated to admit, where much more knowledgeable than her about this sea:

"Is this a Grand Line thing as well?!"

The man with 9s tattooed on his cheeks looked at the box, confused.

"N-not that I heard of- AYEEE!" his sentence was cut off when another yellow box narrowly missed his head and landed in the deck in front of him.

They all looked up. Luffy's eyes lit into stars.

"Oh man, this is SO COOL!"

Above them, the fog remained thick, but behind it there seemed to be something akin of a light show. Flashes of colored light danced in the mist and reflected upon the sea in mesmerizing ways, and here and there air around the Merry seemed to almost… shimmer, there was no other word for it.

The crew, save Luffy and Zoro, took a step back as a small, colorful comet fell on the deck, followed by small trail of rainbow, and if that were not strange enough, instead of damaging the deck in anyway, the comet simply… bounced as if made of cotton.

All around them, similar comets started raining down, on the deck and on the sea, where they would float. Luffy quickly raised his arms up, and grabbed one mid-fall.

"Oi, Luffy, be careful, we don't know what that is!" Usopp was still massaging the lump in his head, caused by the box.

Luffy, following the instincts and curiosity most commonly found in kids of the age three to six, asked out loud "I wonder if this is edible" before promptly shoving it inside his mouth.

He gasped and went wide-eyed. Sanji approached worriedly

"You idiot! Don't just go putting stuff in your mouth like that! Are you alright?!"

"SWEET!"

"Eh?"

Luffy grabbed another light meteor mid-fall and bit it with gusto.

"This is delicious!"

Sanji looked at the glowing shard in Luffy's hand incredulous. Surely it was a rock? Who ever heard of a mineral which was sweet?

He grabbed one of the shards from the ground, slid a finger over it, then licked his finger.

He said "?!"

He then added; "It really is sweet…? What even are these things?"

Nami picked one of the comets near her feet and licked it. Then absent mindedly looked back up to the light show behind the fog .

"Is this… common?"

The freeloaders seemed as flummoxed as the Strawhats, and the man shook his head vehemently.

"No!"

"Even for the Grand Line, this is too weird!" the woman agreed.

The light show and the comets had some eerie beauty to it. For a brief moment, that was enough for them to forget the dangerous sea they were in.

For a brief moment.

Like, two seconds.

Another yellow box fell on the deck, landing with a heavy THUD. There was a black question mark engrave on its sides. Yet another fell to the sea, where it floated. And unlike the gracious and delicious comets, these boxes carried the definite threat of injury, as Usopp's bump could attest. They also didn't look particularly tasty, though Luffy made a mental note to ascertain the fact once opportunity presented itself.(1)

"Hey, we better get inside, these things can really hurt!"

"Eeeh? But I want to watch the lights some more." The captain made a pouty face.

"Eek!"

The blue haired girl flinched as a box almost fell on her, but was saved as Sanji jump-kicked it from above her head, directly into the face of the crown-wearing man, who fell back with some white foam coming out of his mouth.

"Usopp's right, this is getting too dangerous, let's get inside!"

They all ran to the covered area of the ship (a protesting Luffy being dragged by Usopp, and the foaming man being dragged by the blue haired woman), and just in time for the box rain to intensify; the sounds of thuds became frequent, as well as the splashes on the sea. Usopp started worrying out loud if the Merry was going to be okay.

Nami looked at the Log Pose and sighted.

"At least the storm is over. And it seems we are on course again."

The crew became silent for a while, listening to the sounds coming from the outside. Sanji had brought a bit of comet and sat, eyeing it up and down with a thoughtful expression. Usopp sat on the ground, trying to stay as far as way from the freeloaders (who he did not trust in the slightest) as possible. Nami was sitting with the two of them (the male having woken up by now, and did his best to hide the square-shaped red wound in his head) at the table, and Luffy's was trying to look at the lights from a porthole.

"Ah." It was Luffy. Everyone turned to look at him. He half-turned and stared back at the crew. "Zoro's still outside."

He said it in a monotone, simply stating a fact.

Usopp crossed his arms, closed his eyes, and nodded sagely.

"I see, outside." He then nodded some more.

Sanji puffed some smoke of his cigarette, still looking at the shard intensely. "Now that you mention it, yes."

Nami looked at the ceiling. "Yes, he is out there."

There was some more silence, with some thuds coming from outside, Nami spoke again.

"Should we help?"

Sanji frowned. "That shitty marimo can go **** himself."

"W-well I'M not going out there!" Usopp hastly added.

"OI! NAMI!" Luffy was gesticulating wildly at the porthole

Nami quickly turned to Luffy "What happened?!"

His eyes gleamed.

"The dolphin is still out there! Let's turn the ship to-" Nami punched him in the head before he finished the sentence.

"SHUT IT ABOUT THE DOLPHIN!" then some gears clicked in place on her head "…wait, if you can see a dolphin out there then the fog…"

"H-hey guys, I think it stopped" it was Usopp, still sitting cross-legged by the door. He was holding a hand to his ear.

The crew listened. There was no sound coming from outside.

Meekly, Usopp opened the door to see the sky, then sighted in relief.

"All is clear, the sky included."

The group walked out, and indeed the fog was gone, and so was whatever it was that caused the light show to begin with.

The deck was a mess; there were colorful, glistening comet fragments scattered everywhere, including the sea, much to Luffy's delight, and yellow boxes of various sizes, from small enough to hold in one hand to big enough to hide a crouching adult inside, where scattered all over. In fact, Zoro was sleeping while sitting on top of one of the bigger boxes, barrel nowhere in sight.

Sanji picked up one of the bigger shards of comet, and puffed some smoke.

"I think I could use these." He looked at the sea, where more fragments and boxes were floating around. "Usopp, you think you can make something to fish the ones in the water as well? It would be a waste to lose food this unique."

Usopp scratched his head thoughtful

"A fishing net would probably do it, but where did these things even come from to begin with?"

"There was a typhoon."

The crew turned. It was the blue haired woman talking.

"During the confusion, remember? There was a typhoon at one point."

The man with 9s in his cheeks nodded.

"I see. There must have been another ship we couldn't see inside the fog. And this," he taped one of the boxes "is what is left of it after the typhoon."

Usopp started sweating.

"Y-you mean that an entire ship was reduced to rubble just like that?! T-that could have been us!"

The woman chuckled.

"Of course it could, and it probably would as well, with your navigator's skill."

Nami grinned darkly.

"Excuse me?"

"It's as I said. If we hadn't warned you, you would not have reacted in time; we would probably be deep inside the typhoon by now."

"W-well, that is…"

"Do you get it now? The Grand Line is not like the calm, peaceful Blues you are accustomed to, it is not a place for amateurs playing pirate!"

Nami looked shaken.

A voice suddenly spoke behind the blue haired woman, startling everyone;

"We are not playing, though."

Zoro was standing just behind the freeloaders, munching on a bit of comet. "Hey, have you guys tried this? It's pretty sweet."

Usopp slapped the air "Don't you go just putting random things in your mouth too!"

The woman glared at the swordsman.

"What you mean by that?"

"I mean what I just said; we are not 'playing' pirates, we are pirates."

"How can you say that with such confidence after what just happened?!"

Zoro looked around, frowning.

"Why, what happened?" There was a moment of silence. "Why are you two here?" More silence. Zoro took another bite from the fragment, and added with his mouth full "…fwat are fese bofses, by fe way?"

Nami grabbed Zoro's sholders, smiling, with a dark, looming shadow over her eyes.

"Zoro-kun…"

But whatever threat she might have wanted to say was interrupted by Luffy, who was pointing to the sea;

"OI! NAMI!"

"LUFFY YOU CAN TAKE YOUR DOLPHIN AND STICK IT U-"

"No, not that!" he pointed again "There is a guy over there!"

* * *

(1)He later did. They tasted like crap.

* * *

**A/N; **

And do it begins. Again.

For the people who were wating for me updating my Persona/Discworld crossover... I am truly sorry, but this is,I hit a writers block hard on that one. I know where I want to take the plot to, I have all the major points laid out in my head, but whenever I sit up to put it down I keep hitting corners and writing myself into dead ends. I truly wish to continue that one, but I write for fun, not as a work, and I realised I was having no fun writing that anymore. If I ever manage to overcome it, I'll go back to writing it in a heartbeat.

Will this one be different? I hope so. This is a plot bunny so old, it actually preceds that other fic of mine by a whole year. And it is easier to write since all I'll do is slightly alter an already existing plot instead of creating one from zero.

I'll be keeping this fic Mario-centric. Basically, if a scene won't involve Mario or is affected by him existing, I'll skip it over, and you can assume it went the same way as in the original manga. The reason I do this is to avoid just copying dialogue from the original manga, which the average One Piece fan has already read.

I'll also heavily summarize and cut down some of the original dialogue, because while I love manga, I'll be the first to point out it is many times really, really, really redundant. In the same page, characters will sometimes point out the same thing using different words over and over again; "we can't win! It is useless! He is too strong! We are losing!" and so on. I'll cut down those to them saying just two sentences and call it a day. I'll also alter and paraphrase a lot.


	2. Chapter 2

Luffy still hadn't grasped the finer points of being unable to swim (i.e. you end up drowning) so five minutes later Zoro and Sanji were climbing back onboard, one carrying Luffy from his failed impromptu rescue attempt while the other brought the figure in red. Sanji unceremoniously dropped the plump creature in the middle of the ship, facing upwards.

It was a man, of the kind Nami would think of as "a silly uncle"; he seemed shorter than Luffy, but older, and had the most well-trimmed, well-kept, well-waxed, very-stupid-looking mustache she had ever seen, just below his big and round nose. Somehow, she also noticed, his mustache was black while his hair was brown.

There was something about his unconscious face that made you want to pinch, poke, and stretch his nose and cheeks, and that is exactly what Luffy was doing as soon as he had recovered.

"You guys think he is dead?" he pinched stretched one of the man's ears and yelled directly into it "OI, MISTER! ARE YOU DEAD?"

"L-Luffy, be careful! We don't even know who he is!" Usopp took a step back, which in total put him 15 steps as far as possible from the newcomer, and behind the mast. He had already been attacked by an inanimate object today, thank you very much, and he wasn't about to be attacked by a fat pirate on top of that.

"I say we toss him back out, or at least lock him up" Sanji puffed some smoke "Usopp is right, we don't know how dangerous this guy is, and we already have to keep an eye on those two there."

Zoro turned to face them.

"You two. You never answered me, what are you two doing here?"

"Ah, we are taking them to their town." Luffy was still engrossed in playing with the man's face, and answered without turning. It was weirdly malleable.

"Why?"

"No reason. Hey look, I made an Usopp!"

All he had really done was pull and stretch the man's nose until it was pointy, but he was laughing heartily at it. After a few seconds, the nose went back to its original shape with a 'sproing' noise.

"That's our captain to you. As for you two," he grinned at them "you must be thinking about backstabbing us. What are your names?"

The freeloaders were taken back at his blunt assertion.

"I-I'm Mr. Nine"

"M-miss Wednesday"

"Ah? There is something familiar about these names, now what was it…?" he was still grinning, slowly leaning closer to them, causing them to back away.

"WOAH!"

The impromptu interrogation as cut short as the crew turned to face Luffy and the man. He wasn't asleep anymore, and as a matter of fact he was mid-air, falling.

He landed on one knee, facing down, his face hidden under his hair. Luffy was smiling wide-eyed.

"That was awesome! Did you guys see that?!"

The man looked up slowly and dramatically to face them, and as one man, the Strawhats and the two freeloaders snorted. The dramatic effect of his slow rising was ruined by Luffy's handywork on his face, which was fully pulled and stretched in various directions, including his mustache, which the captain had made into a twirl, giving him a ridiculous appearance. There was a 'sproing' noise, as suddenly all his features returned to the way they were before.

Luffy was still drooling in emotion, sitting cross legged at the ground;

"No, really did any of you see that?! He was just asleep and laying down and then suddenly he was like WHOOSH into the air! Hey, hey, can you teach me to do that?!"

The man, whoever he was, didn't say much. Or rather, anything at all. The first thing he did was take his hand to his forehead, and then he seemed surprised with something. He quickly started feeling his head while looking around at the ground.

"Eh? You lose something?"

The man faced him, then pointed at his strawhat with his right hand, and at his own head with the left hand. Luffy reacted by holding his hat firmly.

"What? No way, this one is mine, go find your own!"

The man shook his head and looked around, trying to find help from the rest of the crew, but got little more than weird looks from them, and a yelp from when he looked at Usopp.

He ran quickly to the side of the ship to scan the sea.

Sanji, showing a distinctive lack of social skills, commented out loud "This guy doesn't seem to have all the screws in place."

If the man heard it, he showed no signs of being offended, still looking intensely at the sea. There was a small 'click' as Zoro slightly removed his topmost katana from its sheath.

"Oi, you, you better start telling us exactly what were you doing in the middle of nowhere like this," He had a grin carefully calculated to be frightening, "If you don't want any trouble."

"Aaah!" that was the man, apparently surprised at something on the ocean. He did not look back to face Zoro, which irritated the swordsman; he had dealt with smugness, with underestimation, with looks of superiority, bluff callings, and death threats, but this was the first time he could remember when he had just been completely, utterly ignored. To make matters worse he heard that ero-cook snicker.

The man, still fixing his eyes at the sea, took a few steps back from the side of the ship, and took a determinate stance.

"OI! I'm talking to you, here!" Zoro had fully unsheathed his sword, and was pointing it at the man.

The man started running at the side of the ship.

"W-what is he-" Usopp started, but didn't manage to finish before becoming speechless.

The man took a jump. It was a very impressive jump, of the kind he'd seen Luffy, Zoro and Sanji take in the past, during fights; just about high enough to go over someone's head. This isn't what made him speechless.

What made him speechless is the way the man fell precisely on top of the handrail on the side of the ship, and used the speed from his head start to immediately jump a second time;

"YA~HOOOO!"

The second jump was gigantic. The man was cleary able to leap small buildings in a single bound. He had opened his arms slightly, and was smiling like someone having the time of his life. He fell at the sea and disappeared.

"See? SEE? Like I said, he just WHOOSHED like that!"

Nami was impressed.

"Was that… a devil fruit power?" she seemed unsure.

"The Jump-Jump Fruit?" Usopp started wondering "Or the Leap-Leap Fruit? Is there even a devil fruit that grants 'super jumping' as a power."

"If it was a devil fruit, he was quite suicidal." Sanji puffed some smoke. "Jumping at the sea, I mean."

Luffy reacted shocked.

"OH YEAH, he must have forgotten he'd drown! We have to save him!" Zoro grabbed him mid-air as he jumped after the man.

"LISTEN TO YOUR OWN ADVICE FIRST DAMNIT!"

Right at this moment, the man jumped back on board. Not climbed back onboard, *jumped* back onboard, somehow getting impulse enough to get airborne from the water. He had his right arm pointing upwards, fist clenched holding some red cloth.

"H-he came back? It's not a Devil Power after all?!" Usopp was trying his best to hide again. "And what is he, a dog?!" He added this as the man proceeded to quickly shake himself dry.

Luffy casually walked up to the man.

"You HAVE to teach me how to do that! Eh? What's this in your hand?"

The man opened his hand and unfolded a red hat, the same color as his shirt, which apparently had been floating at the sea. He twisted it dry and put it in his head. There was an "M" on it.

Luffy hit the lower side of his fist in his open hand, in a signal of understanding.

"Ooooh, Myrmidon! Your name must be Myrmidon!"

"Like hell it is!" that was Nami, cleary getting fed up with this nonsense. "You there, what is your name? And-" she pointed to all the yellow boxes and comet fragments which still littered the deck "what is this stuff?!"

The man looked at her and, with a cheerful and a tad high-pitched voice, said his first words in this new world.

"It's-a me, Mario!"

* * *

This was not going as expected. Not at all. At first the woman waited patiently to see if he would add something, and then asked.

"And what do you mean 'it's-a you'? Should we know something?"

Mario was famous. It wasn't prideful thinking or arrogance, just a fact; in all his trips around the world, the reaction would be 'Mario? You mean the Mario _of the jumps_?! And the green guy is with him too!'. In the Mushroom Kingdom all praised on him, in the Koopa Kingdom all cursed him, in the Sarasaland, Bean Bean Kingdom, Isle Delfino, even in Rosalina's–

Then it hit him. Of course, Rosalina's Observatory. He had gone into space; no matter how famous he were, there was still the final frontier for it to cross. Still, why was he still in space again? ("Oi!") He was sure he got to the center of the universe and there he… he did… ("OI, YOU!") there was some… stuff which… what had happened, again?

He rested his chin into his hand in a thoughtful stance, trying to focus, ("STOP IGNORING ME YOU PRICK") before being woken up to notice a green-haired man pointing a sword directly into his nose. There was a blond-haired man behind him apparently trying to hold his laughter.

The swordsman's eyebrows were twitching.

"You. Explain yourself. Now."

Mario looked up, thoughtful, thinking the best way to explain he was a plumber chasing a turtle-dragon that kidnapped the princess of all mushroom people from another planet and took her into space during a rain of candy star fragments.

He finally slapped his fist in his hand, as if to say "got it".

* * *

What followed as a long section of pantomime and mimicry, all of which just made Zoro get more and more ticked off, believing that this Mario guy was making fun of him.

First the fat man pointed to himself and started making motions with his hand as if he were fixing something. Then he spun around, and started acting like some sort of hunchbacked creature. He'd eventually stop and make noises with his mouth and gestures, as if he were spitting something. He spun again and started acting lady-like. He spun again and started acting like the hunchback spitting creature, laughing and holding something. He spun and acting lady-like, as if he were in distress and something was holding him. He then spun and acted like a small person being scared or outraged, then spun and acted as another small person scared or outraged, then again. He then pointed upwards, opened his arms, and started running around making "woooosh" noises with his mouth. Then he grabbed a piece of the candy-rock that were still everywhere in the ship, and pointed at it.

He then stopped and smiled, apparently very proud of being concise and to the point.

All the while, Sanji was laughing more and more at Zoro's lack of reaction, Nami was starting to worry if this would be a common occurrence at the Grand Line, Usopp was just confused, and Luffy…

Luffy had been sitting cross legged, watching him intently, and sometimes nodding as if in agreement. He would sometimes interrupt and ask stuff like "how big a turtle are we talking about here?" and "just mushrooms? An entire kingdom?", to which this Mario guy would answer by raising his hand up as if to say "this tall" or shake his head in denial and then act like a turtle, but with flapping wings.

After the farce was over, Zoro's still extended sword was shaking in anger, and he was about to burst when he noticed his captain. Luffy had a serious expression in his face, as if he had been just told an important secret. He got up, and as he walked the shadow of his straw hat covered his eyes. He put his hand on Zoro's raised and shaking sword arm and lowered it, to which Zoro complied; captain's orders, after all. He walked up to the newcomer, put his hands on his shoulders, looked directly into his eyes for a few seconds, and asked;

"Can you poop?"

* * *

**A/N**

You may be wondering "which Mario is it?" Not that I mean to imply you guys don't know Mario, but fans of the games may remember he changes drastically between them; the original Jumpman was not a plumber at all; the Mario from SMB was at full height as a small man and grew twice his size when he at a mushroom, which was changed to the mushroom being his normal size in later games; the Mario from Mario Strikers is a bloodthirsthy warrior out to feast in the blood of his enemie's children (and so are everyone else in that game), and so on. Then there are the cartoon Marios, the anime Marios, and the movie Marios.

'My' Mario is a bit of them all... but he is mostly Paper Mario. Not that he is made of Paper, but rather he will act as I always perceived Paper Mario did; not really caring about stuff. Paper Mario is the sort of guy who would walk into a village, hear about there being a thief stealing things from everyone, talk to the thief, and then proceed to ignore all that shit because he didn't really give two craps bout it, until someone directly came to him and said "Hey Mario, go after that thief!" at which point he would do it because... huh... stuff.

That being said, he also will have lots of bits from other Marios in him; the mimicry, for example, was directly lifted from Legend of the Seven Stars (though he was better at it in that game than in the fic).


	3. Chapter 3

"Oi, Luffy, are you sure about this?!"

"Hm." Luffy nodded. "You heard his tale, we can't just sit still and do nothing."

The crew reacted in synchrony; "AS IF ANYONE COULD HAVE UNDERSTOOD THAT"

Still smiling, Luffy pointed to Mario, who had started rounding up all the yellow boxes on the deck on a pile (apparently he thought they were useful in some way), and said "He is our nakama, and that is that." He nodded with his eyes closed. "At least until we find a way to get him back into space."

"Ah, sure, if it's just that then there is no problem." Nami nodded.

"If it's temporary." Zoro leaned against a wall.

"Yes, yes." Usopp nodded with his arms crossed.

Sanji walking around the ship collecting the sweet rocks from the floor, listening to the conversation absent-mindedly. "Can't be helped if he's from space."

At this point they all stopped in their tracks, and again as one, the Strawhats shared a thought; "Space?!"

Usopp started cold sweating "S-SPACE?!"

Luffy tilted his head. "Eh? You guys deaf or something?"

Nami rubbed her forehead, and Sanji facepalmed before resuming his comet-gathering, but neither said anything. Zoro just kept his arms crossed, even though his brows furrowed a bit more than usual. Usopp walked up to Luffy with a serious expression.

"Hey, Luffy… I've been meaning to say this for a while but…" he placed both hands on Luffy's shoulders and looked directly at the captain's eyes. "You shouldn't trust liars."

Luffy, alongside everyone at hearing range, just stared at Usopp with a blank look until the long-nosed boy started sweating. Nami came to his recue.

"Luffy! Even if, and that is a big 'if', you correctly understood whatever it was this guy said, he could just be a crazy person!"

Luffy smiled broadly. "Shishishishi! Yeah, he could. That's the fun part, isn't it?"

Nami knew once the captain got this way, he wouldn't budge, but she still had to say her mind;

"But you can't just invite anyone to the crew like that!"

"Eeh~" he made a pouty face "But you saw him jump, he could be the crew's Jumpman."

"THAT IS NOT EVEN A REAL POSITION" Usopp yelled.

Nami added; "And even if it were a real position, this man just appeared out of nowhere and is…"

One of the yellow "?" blocks Mario had been piling up fell down from the top of the pile. It turned brown with a frowny face, and out of it popped a pile of gold coins.

"…absolutely PERFECT for the job, welcome onboard, mister Mario!"

Mario waved back in appreciation and said "Yaha!" Before throwing the brown cube at the sea as if discarding garbage.

"I don't even care that I can't understand you anymore!" Nami gave him a thumbs up.

"H-how did he even do that? Did you see? There was no opening on the box or anything, the coins just sort of appeared!?" Usopp was still protesting.

"Hahaha, who cares? They are what they are." Luffy laughed.

"And they are floating at the sea!" Nami rushed to the side of the ship, watching the boxes that fell outside the ship, along the colorful sweet comets. She had a serious case of the Belly-Eyes "Usopp, go make that net already, we need to fish these things up!"

"Oh, while at it, get more of these sweet rocks, will you?" Sanji added, still collecting them from the ground.

"B-but you guys-"

"Just give up."

Usopp turned to face Zoro, who was still leaning his back against the wall.

"This is the captain's ship. If the captain says he is a crew member, he is a crew member." He had been in a bad mood since the pantomime show. "It is not our place to go against the captain's wishes."

"W-well, sure, but…"

Sanji stopped working for a moment and asked.

"What of the other two? That shitty man and Miss Wednesday-schwan~(!), where are they?"

*Ahem*

They looked at Mario, who was pointing at the handrail of the ship, where the two freeloaders had been kneeling dramatically for the past few minutes waiting for them to notice. There was an island behind them, with giant cacti. Nami gasped.

"Wait, we arrived already?!"

Mr. 9 lost his composure "WE HAD ARRIVED SINCE BEFORE YOU SAW THIS RED GUY! Ah- I mean…" he coughed "We have to go now, thank you for taking us here!"

Miss Wednesday added "We shall meet again, should we be destined to!"

Them both said, in unison, "Bye, bye, baby!" and backflipped into the sea.

It was an okay backflip, Mario mentally gave them a 4/10.

Zoro shrugged.

"What's up with those two?"

"Who cares? There's an island, let's go there!"

"W-wait, Luffy," that was Usopp, who by now Mario had started thinking of as 'Luigi-like', "what if there are monsters of the like in there?!"

"Doesn't matter," Nami pointed at the Log Pose "We have to port here for some time anyway. This is how the grand Line works, remember? We must wait for the magnetic field to update."

"You mean we have to stay in the islands even if they are dangerous?!"

"Haha, you worry too much, this is an adventure, an adventure! If you have an island, you must go in there, that is what being a pirate means!"

"Ah?"

That was Mario. The crew turned to face him. He stared blankly at their faces, then slowly looked up at the Jolly Roger.

"Ah." He lowered his head and held his chin, digesting this new information.

Nami sweated.

"Don't tell me he just now realized this is a pirate ship."

"Doesn't look awfully worried about it anyhow." Zoro muttered.

Mario just shrugged and gave a small jump with his right hand raised high up, to which Luffy replied "That is the spirit!"

"I-is he strong enough to feel safe, or just that carefree?"(1)

"Now, everyone, to the island!"

* * *

There had been a party. The crew members were surprised at first at how welcoming the villagers were to pirates, but were quickly swayed into partying with everyone else. Mario didn't mind from the start; from his personal experience "mortal enemy" was the guy trying to murder you one week and playing tennis with you the next one.

He still steadfastly refused to drink any of the alcohol he was offered; his mama had raised he and his brother to know of the wiles of drinking, but gladly started chugging down what they said was 'orange juice'. The orange juice tasted bad, but made him feel kind of happy, so he drank some more of it, until he felt strangely sleepy, and passed out right there on the pub table.

He woke up a later that night, with a killer headache and a bump on his head, because a body fell on top of him. He looked up, and there was a hole in the ceiling; Zoro was looking down at him from it.

"Wah~", Mario greeted, a little groggy.

"Oh, hey, woke up, have you? Anyway, this was a trap, everyone here is trying to kill us. You better pretend you are still sleeping."

Mario jumped from the floor, through the hole, and into the ceiling as casually as someone taking a stroll.

"Or don't, I guess." He shrugged. "Do what you want, just don't get in my way."

Mario was going to "wah~" in disagreement, but was interrupted.

"HE'S UP THERE! AFTER HIM!" came a voice from down below, followed by others;

"Another one woke up!"

"That red guy didn't have a bounty, though."

"Who cares, he saw too much anyway!"

Zoro grinned, looking down "Hey, hey, don't bother with him, I can take you all by myself!" then he added low enough so they wouldn't hear "There were over one hundred of them, and I already took care of about twenty, but honestly the remaining ones are becoming a pain in the ass. But I think with the two of us we could-" he turned back to face Mario…

"YOU DAMN COWARD!"

…who was already a fading red dot in the distance, jumping from rooftop to rooftop towards where the ship was docked.

"God, he's worse than Usopp! I guess I'm by myself here- GAH" he dodged a bullet, literally, and went down to ground level again to run; staying still against this many opponents would only allow for them to quickly gang up on him.

By the time he knocked out a nun and a kid who made the grave mistake of thinking merely dressing up as civilians made them seem like civilians, he heard some screams (and… cheering?) from the distance, slowly getting closer.

"…the hell is he doing?!..."

"…ha~…"

"Shoot him! Shoot him!"

"Yahoo~…"

"I *AM* SHOOTING HIM, IT'S NOT WORKIN- GAH"

"YIIIIPEEEE~!"

Zoro turned to face the screams, and what he saw at first was little more than a confused light show mixed with flying bodies, then his eyes focused;

It was Mario… or at least a Mario-shaped creature apparently made out of rainbows, of all things. It was running full-speed in the middle of a group of bounty hunters, with stubby arms raised as if to imitate a plane (or so Zoro would think if he knew what a plane was), and leaving a trail of colorful after-images. It simply ran, ignoring all the bullets, knives, rocks, cannonballs, arrows and swords being flung at it; which was fine because apparently all of them _ricocheted _away from its body anyway. Zoro could also swear on Kuina's grave that he could hear a faint fanfare music coming from the creature.

It ran up to a bounty hunter and touched his chest; immediately there was a rainbow explosion, and the hunter was flung back a good ten feet.

"The hell is he doing?" Zoro had stopped running, as the other hunters also were now ignoring him to focus on whatever was this thing. They were wasting ammo on it, because when all you have is a hammer, and are faced with an exploding sugar high entity made out of rainbows and cheers, you have nothing else to do but try to nail it down.

Slowly, the light and music began to fade, and eventually all that was left was Mario, still running. A swordsman swung desperately at him, and for once he clumsily dodged it. The bounty hunters noticed that.

"Hey, he's stopped doing the-… the thing! That! Whatever he was doing!"

"GET HIM! Before it starts again!"

There were still about ten people between him and Zoro, but instead of slowing down, Mario simply jumped right into the group, landing with both feet on the face of a swordsman right in the middle, then using it as a stepping stone to jump again, landing right besides Zoro with his arms open.

"Tadaa~!"

The swordsman just stared at him for some time and grinned.

"Heh, not bad for a newcomer."

"Aaah!" Mario suddenly hid behind Zoro with a scream as a gunshot landed on the ground next to them.

"What." The swordsman asked flatly.

Mario looked at him and made a motion with his hand imitating a handgun, 'fired' it by going "pshew pshew" with his mouth, then shook his head and hands.

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU CAN'T HANDLE GUNS, YOU JUST WALKED IN THE MIDDLE OF A GUNFIGHT"

"Wah~" he pointed at the swords Zoro was carring.

"Yes! But at least I knew what I was getting into!"

There was another shot, which Zoro deflected with his sword. By this time the hunters had understood that the best thing they could do was keep their distance and shoot at them; before, Zoro would just run up to them anyway and cut them up after dodging, but having to protect Mario was making that strategy more difficult. More shots started ringing, and were one by one deflected by the swordsman, while Mario crouched behind him holding his hat on his head so firmly is covered his eyes. Zoro shooed the plumber with one hand.

"I told you not to get into my way! Just, go the rooftops or something! It's hard to aim there!"

"Wah!" the pluber gestured wildly to the distance between himself and the next rooftop.

"Tsk, fine, I'll cover you, just go!" with that Zoro lounged forward to create a distraction, muttering in between his mouthful of sword "…can't dodge bullets, good grief…", while Mario took this opportunity to run to a strategically tall nearby building.

"YAAAH!" there was a scream from up top, and something flew down at him.

"Ah!"

He sidestepped as a barrel crash-landed at his position, coming from the building's top. As he looked up, he recognized a woman he vaguely remembered had been dressed as a nun earlier at the party. Without her robes, she looked quite burly.

She let out a 'tsk' from having missed, and changed her target to Zoro, throwing another barrel at him; apparently the roof was full of them. Sensing danger, the swordsman tilted his head back, causing the hunters he was running into to try and make use of his opening.

Then in a fell swoop, the barrel was in four pieces, and the hunters all fell down.

"Oi, oi, don't go around wasting good liquor."

Mario had by now reached a series of staircases that led to the roof. Zoro pointed at the woman up top with his sword.

"Oi! Red man! You take care of that one, I'll make sure the rest of them here don't bother you."

"Wah!"

Mario started to climb, only to have to narrowly dodge another barrel. The woman back up bellowed.

"'Take care of me'?! As if I were going to sit still and let you do that!"

Mario looked up. There were three sets of stairs connecting to the roof, and there was that big, burly person at the top, throwing barrels at him. He looked to his side and saw a stone hammer, the weapon of choice of a bounty hunter Zoro had already defeated. His eyes became slits and he smiled beatifically, sparkles all around his face; some things never change, do they?

In less than thirty seconds he was nearing the top, having jumped over, dodged and smashed all the barrels thrown at him.

"DON'T GET COCKY!" The woman suddenly grabbed the stair Mario was in and pushed it backwards, causing it to tilt and fall. This was cheating, as far as Mario was concerned, but he didn't comment on it,(2) instead he quickly climbed the rest of the stair mid-fall, then used the last step to jump right above the woman, going for a perfect landing on her face.

Then she grabbed his leg mid-air, which was _definetely _against the rules; Mario was starting to wonder if he was going to have to teach these people some sportsmanship.

"I SAID, DON'T GET COCKY!" with that, she threw him back to the ground level. He spun mid-air and landed on a knee, but before he could react the woman herself landed right in front of him, shaking the ground and causing the plumber to fall backwards. She had a knuckle duster on her hand, and was already ready to take the blow.

"Kairiki…"

From this position, Mario couldn't dodge.

"MEIRIKEN!"

The fist flew down.

Mario flinched and closed his eyes, then meekly opened one when he noticed he was still, well, alive.

"Oi, oi, what you think you are doing?"

Zoro was standing above him, gripping her head with one hand. She was one her knees, trying to wrench his fist away, but surprisingly unable to do so.

"Red, I gave you _one job_." He tightened his grip on her head "And you, where did all your strength go to? Is this all you've got?"

The woman started foaming and fainted.

"M-MISS MONDAY!"

"How could she lose in raw strength?! This makes no sense!"

Mario and Zoro looked to the source of the screams. It was a tall man with long, frilly hair, who Mario remembered as being the mayor of the town, holding a saxophone. Miss Wednesday and Mr. 9 were besides him, and all three were cleary shocked. The mayor was the first to speak

"I-I see, the marines screwed up on the wanted posters!"

"Yeah, that skinny kid can't possibly be the captain…"

"Wah~?"

Zoro waved the question away "No, Nami isn't the captain either."

"Hmm…" Mario held his chin, thoughtful.

"I can see why the confusion, though."

"IGARAPPA!"

Both swordsman and plumber jumped back as the mayor's saxophone shot a burst of bullets.

"Wah-ha! "

"Fine, fine, bullets mean I take care of him, you go after the other two!"

"Hey now, you don't get to decide who you fight with!" Mr. 9, who somehow had made their way right behind them while holding two metal bats he apparently pulled out of his derriere, lunged at Zoro.

"You are obviously the priority over the fat one!"

Mario looked down and rubbed his belly, insulted, but didn't protest.(3)

"Then, it is me and you, fatty!" Mario turned to face Miss Wednesday, who was grinning "But why play fair?" She put a finger on her mouth and whistled "Lend me a hand, Carue!"

"QUACK!"

Mario watched as a giant duck appeared and raised a wing in greeting. Miss Wednesday looked flustered

"Not 'shake hands', give me a hand IN COMBAT!"

She quickly ran to the bird and mounted it. Really? Mounting giant ducks? Can't they ride dinosaurs like sensible people? This planet was quack.

"Carue, let us show him what you can do!"

The bird sat down. Mario walked over and started to pet it. It blushed and let a grateful "Quaak~"

"Not show him _tricks_! And you, stop petting him, he's going to think this was a 'good boy' moment!"

There was a distant scream, and the three of them turned their heads to see that Mr. 9 had apparently fell from a building, pushed by Zoro.

"Aah, I better step up my game," Miss Wednessday got up on top of the bird and raised her hands above her head, then said in a seductive tone "Hey there, watch closely to this~"

She started belly-dancing, with the circular pattern on her clothes, specifically her breasts and belly, making confusing, hypnotic images.

Mario watched her dance for a full minute, then clapped in appreciation when she gave up and fell on fours panting, exhausted and looking deeply confused

"How come this didn't work! You, you were looking at the right areas, right?!"

Mario tilted his head in confusion. She facepalmed. "(So innocent…!)"

"Here, you were supposed to look here!" she pointed at the circles on her chest. Mario blushed and averted his eyes. Mama-Mario had warned him about the women of the world.

"Now! Carue!" Miss Wednesday took this opportunity to gallop forward, spinning form sort of blade on a string on her pinky finger. They ran right past Mario, with the blade on the opposite side of where he was.

"Wrong side, stupid bird! Stop! I said... sto... p...!" The voice was fading in the distance.

Mario adjusted his cap and did a V sign with his fingers, looking directly at the 'camera'. The battle had been a huge success.

From the distance, he could still hear Zoro fighting. Mario jumped to a rooftop and started trying to make his way there without being detected by the saxophone fellow.

He arrived to see Zoro with his arm tied up by a long rope, connected to Mr. 9's bat, and positioned himself for a well-aimed head-stomp.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you!"

Both Mario and Zoro turned to see Miss Wednesday (who had ditched her bird, probably figuring out it was easier to fight without its 'help') holding a knife near a sleeping Luffy's currently gigantic belly.

"If any of you two move, this boy here dies. You there!" she nodded to Mario, "go near your friend there."

Mario jumped down to street level and landed right besides Zoro.

"You really don't get the gist of what defeating your opponent means, do you?" the swordsman muttered.(4)

Mr. 9 was ecstatic.

"Very good, Ms. Wednesday, now we got them exactly where we wanted!"

"Get ready!" the mayor had appeared again, on top of the tallest building around, and Mario was relieved to see he was without the saxophone, but not for long; he pulled his bowtie slightly, and from his giant curly hair six guns appeared.

"The hell is that?!" Zoro summed the situation accordingly.

"Set! Ready!"

Mario crouched behind Zoro and pulled his cap over his eyes and ears.

"IGARAPAPPA!" the mayor's hair let out a burst of small cannonballs.

"HEY WHA-" There was a scream from Mr. 9.

Zoro had rasped the rope still tied to his arm and pulled it with all his strength, sending Mr. 9 flying…

"WAI-"

…right between the two and the cannonballs, which exploded on his face upon impact. Mario was impressed. Using the initial impulse, Zoro kept spinning, and threw the bounty hunter at Miss Wednesday, making her drop the knife.

"IGARAPAPPA!"

"YAHOO!" Mario jumped at a nearby building wall, dodging this new burst of explosives. From this wall, he jumped to another, on the other side of the street, and then again, zig-zagging up the walls as to make himself harder to hit, and slowly making his way up to the Mayor.

"Oi Luffy, I'm going to use your belly!" At the same time, Zoro dodged the bullets and ran towards his sleeping nakama, jumping on his rubbery oversized stomach and using it as a trampoline, rising upwards.

"W-what?!" the mayor took a step back, but it was too late. Mario had used the last wall jump to fly a good ten feet above his head.

Picture the scene in slow motion; the mayor, silhouetted against the moon, speechless. Above him, a short figure speeding down, stubby arms raised to its sides for equilibrium. Below him, the speeding up figure of a swordsman, hand ready to draw the sword.

At the exact same time as Zoro cut his stomach with the strength of a man who can cut down stone, Mario landed in his head with the full weight of a man raised on nothing but pasta.

And thus, the battle was over.

* * *

(1)Truth is, the fact the skull-and-crossbones was wearing a silly straw hat fit perfectly in the kind of zany take on piracy he would find in the Mushroom Kingdom, and if anything it made Mario feel more at home.

(2)But if he had, his comment would have been "Wah!"

(3)But if he had, his comment would have been "Mah."

(4)It meant you made him faint so he could try again next week?

* * *

**A/N** 'guest' Thanks for commenting, and yes, Galaxy is being featured prominently, but it is mostly because of the setting. I wanted to have a plausible reason for Mario to be on One Piece's world without using dimensional travel stuff, and it just kind of felt natural.


	4. Chapter 4

It was a little while later. Zoro had rounded up all the unconscious bodies and was having a drink on top of a building, watching the moon.

"Phew, finally, a peaceful night"

"Hmm…" said Mario, sitting beside him.

"You know, you got in my way back there more than you helped."

"Mah."

"Pfeh. At least you didn't run." He extended his bottle to the plumber. "Want some?"

"…eh?"

"What?"

Mario pointed at the bottle, did some gestures of drinking and then acting groggy.

"Of course it isn't juice, what are you, stupid? Who ever heard of pirates drinking juice?"

"Ah." Mario refused the bottle.

"What's up with your speech anyway?"

"Eh?"

"Nevermind." Zoro sighted. He took a drink, then turned his head. "Uh? Is there someone down there?"

The both crawled to the other side of the building and stared at the street below. The mayor had apparently woken up, which in itself was a great feat, given the double-tech he'd just received a few minutes ago. Mr. 9 and Miss Wednesday were also awake. The problem were not these three, who, as anyone could see, were not in a condition to fight, awake or not. The problem is that a new couple had appeared; a tall tanned man in a black trench coat, who you knew was a badass because he was wearing sunglasses in the middle of the night, and a blonde woman who apparently had a thing for citrus, having dressed in a lemon-green dress with a pattern of lemons and lemon earrings. Mario had a sour taste in his mouth merely looking. He and Zoro listened the conversation from the roof.

"Haha, lost to a single swordsman and a fat sidekick, really?" the lemon-woman laughed, Mario pouted and rubbed his belly. He had big bones, that's all.

"Don't you feel ashamed of being such a failure?"

The mayor seemed to dislike these two just about as much as Mario was starting to.

"Have you come all this way just to mock us, Mr. 5, Miss Valentine?"

The woman, apparently 'Miss Valentine', laughed this off.

"Yeah, mostly."

"But it seems we also have a duty to fulfill here, thanks to you."

Mr. 9 and Miss Wednesday were trying to get back up, now that reinforcements had arrived.

"Thank you very much, if it's you two, you won't have any trouble taking care of them!" Mr. 9 said.

"Yes, please, take care of the swordsman and the fatty!" Miss Wednesday begged.

There was a brief silence while Mr. 5 scorned.

"...what are you talking about?"

"Hahaha, you really think we would have come all the way here to help you losers?"

Mr 9 seemed genuinely confused.

"W-why? What are you doing here, then?!"

"The Boss's secret is out." There was a collective gasp from the trio before Mr. 5 continued. "You know the rules of the company; everything is a secret. Don't ask, don't tell. About the past, I mean. It seems some people don't like following the rules, however."

"Hahaha, yeah, this is royalty to you, always thinking they are above the rules, right?"

At this Mr 9 jumped.

"H-hey, this crown here is for decorative purposes only, completely fake, man!"

"We know that you git, we are not talking about you."

From the rooftop, Zoro took another sip of the liquor.

"Oh, it seems like there is some inside intrigue going on." He stared at the swollen body of Luffy, who was still on the street and would surely be caught in the crossfire if they started fighting. "Crap, I should have moved him."

Below, Mr. 5 kept on his audience-friendly exposition;

"It seems a couple of members of the kingdom of Alabasta-"

"IGARAPAPPA!"

The sudden attack engulfed Mr. 5 and Ms Valentine in an explosion. Mr. 9 turned to face the mayor.

"Mister 8?! What are you doing?!" Ah, of course he was a Mr. Number as well, Mario had been wondering for some time.

"Igaram?!" Ms. Wednesday called, surprised. Was this his name, too?

The mayor, Mr. 8 or Igaram, Mario couldn't decide anymore, turned to face Ms. Wednesday.

"RUN! NOW!"

Before she could react, however, Ms. Valentine appeared above her. Well above her. Mario was somewhat impressed, that had been an at least 7/10 jump.

"Haha, this isn't going to work!" Ms. Valentine kicked down Ms Wednesday's head, narrowly missing, but still hitting and breaking the ornament used to keep Wednesday's ponytail in place, causing her long blue hair to fall over her shoulders. Ms. Wednesday tried to retaliate, but Ms. Valentine suddenly _flew_ back up. Flew. Not jumped.

Mario huffed and crossed his arms, annoyed. That wasn't a proper jump at all! She barely flexed those leg muscles, certainly not enough to get that much height. Mario didn't know what sorcery was this, but he removed the mental score; there were clearly shenanigans going on.

Then Mr. 8 exploded.

"IGARAM!"

Mr. 5 slowly walked out of the flames caused by Mr. 8's attack, unscathed.

"The betrayers are Igaram, Leader of the royal guard of Alabasta, and…" he took a picture out of his pocket showing a picture of her "…the princess of the Kingdom of Alabasta, Neferatari Vivi."

Besides Zoro, Mario let out a soft "Ah?!" and took a step back in surprise. Mr. 5 was casually picking his nose.

"Boss's orders were clear. You are both to die here."

He aimed as if he were going to throw the booger at them. Gross, Mario thought.

Mr. 9 suddenly put himself between Miss Wednesday and Mr. 5.

"I don't know what's going on, but you are still my partner, so get out of here safely!"

"Mister 9!"

Mr. 9 grinned, "Bye, bye, baby!" And ran towards Mr. 5, who changed to aim the booger at him.

"This stupid loyalty will be your grave, you know."

He flicked the bullet at a surprisingly high speed, and it landed on Mr. 9.

Who exploded. Mario nearly jumped in surprise(1), what was that?

"Geez, that is one dangerous snot." Zoro commented.

Mr. 5 immediately started picking another booger.

"Now, for the main target."

"C-Carue!"

"QUACK!"

Miss Wednesday called for her duck, but it visibly wouldn't make it in time. Mr. 5 aimed the booger.

"Booger Bullet!"

There was an explosion as… he missed.

Mostly because a fat Italian plumber landed on his head.

* * *

It had been a perfect landing, too; Mario's feet, and his entire body weight, pushed Mr 5 face-first into the floor, causing the ground to crack on impact.

Mario used the rebound force to quickly jump again and land in front of Miss Wednesday, grab her as she let out an "Eek!" in surprise, before letting out a hearty "YA-HOO~" as he jumped again, carrying her in his arms, and landing on a nearby roof. He quickly proceeded to jump from roof to roof, away from the scene.

"Q-quack?!" on the street, Carue suddenly performed a rather amazing 180 degree turn and began chasing the plumber.

From the roof, Zoro watched Mario fade into the distance, frozen.

"What is that _idiot_ doing?!" He half-hid himself to avoid more trouble, though needn't bother; the agents had understandingly lost their cool and weren't really thinking straight enough to check if there was anyone else nearby. Mr. 5 rose up to his knees.

There was some blood dripping from his forehead, and his sunglasses had cracked, although not enough for his eyes to be visible.

But, above all, he looked _furious._

"Are you alright?!" Miss Valentine was trying to help him stand up, but he pushed her hand away.

"We are going after him." He spat some blood on the ground, where it exploded.

"A-are you sure, you did hit your-"

"Now!"

"H-hey, wait for me!"

Without waiting for an answer, he dashed to the direction Mario had taken Miss Wednesday, Miss Valenting following him.

Once the area was clear, Zoro jumped down to ground level and watched they disappear in the distance.

"Crap, this is what happens when the captain starts hiring new people out of nowhere."

Mr. 8, or Igaram, who he thought had been unconscious, suddenly grabbed his leg.

"O-oi! What you think you are doing?! Let go old man!"

"Sir swordsman! You two are much stronger than me, I beg of you, please protect her!"

"And why in hell should I help you jerks?!" he started shaking his leg, trying to get free, but the man had a surprisingly strong grip.

"S-she is royalty!" The fake mayor seemed desperate. "If you take her to Alabasta, you will be rewarded! Please!"

There was a female voice from behind them.

"My, my, that sounds very interesting. How about a billion Beli?"

Zoro didn't bother turning around, there was only one person who it could have been.

"Nami. Didn't you get drunk and pass out?"

"You thought I was asleep, didn't you?" She smirked. "Acting."

Zoro lacked a retort to that, so settled to answering "Is that so." Mr. 8 was more eloquent;

"A BILLION BERI?!"

Nami grinned.

"Weelll~, she is royalty, and who knows what can happen to her if we don't help, right~?"

"I-I have a soldier's salary!"

"Oh, you mean her life is worth less than your salary? What an evil guard you are~"

"If you take her to the palace, surely they will pay you!"

"Ah? You mean we have to rescue her first?" She snorted "You must really think we are stupid. As if pirates would just help royalty without a front pay."

Zoro raised his hand.

"Ah, actually…"

Nami turned to face him.

"Ah?"

* * *

"HE DID WHAT?!" Nami hadn't actually seen any of Mario's actions from wherever she was hiding, and reacted as expected hearing it from Zoro.

"For the third time, he jumped on the guy's head, grabbed the woman, and whooshed away!"

"And you didn't stop him!" She pointed an accusing finger at Zoro. He sighed.

"Of course I didn't, what did you want me to do, team up with Mr. Explosion and the Lemons Woman against him?!"

She let out a sigh as well.

"Aah, that doesn't matter anymore." She turned to Mr. 8 "Is the pay really guaranteed?"

"Sure! Just bring her home safely!"

"Very well, I'm on the job!" she turned to face Zoro, and pointed to the distance "Zoro, go fetch those two!"

"Why should I help you on your deals?!"

"Eh~? Isn't it obvious? I am the one who gets the money, sure, but I promised the help of the whole crew."

"You're not even trying to not sound selfish!"

"Hey, its fine, you just have to cut those two right? You love cutting people up."

From behind them, Luffy got up, half asleep, and went to take a piss.

"Don't just make me sound like a sadist!"

"Come on, do it for me, then?"

"I'm not that stupid erocook, don't think you can just order me around like that!"

"Oooh, could it be that the mighty Pirate Hunter Zoro is afraid of losing?"

"SAY THAT AGAIN TO MY FACE!"

"Oooh, could it be that the mighty Pirate Hunter Zoro is afraid of losing?"

"NOT LITERALY DAMNIT!"

Nami let out a sigh and looked seriously at him.

"Did you forget? You owe me."

"Shut up, I already paid you in full."

"But if you add up the interest, you still owe me about 300,000 Beli."

"You keep hogging all the money we got to yourself, of course I won't be able to pay like that!"

Nami looked at him with pitiful eyes.

"So that is what you are, a swordsman who keeps making up excuses not to keep his promises."

"What?!"

Nami shrugged, smirking.

"I mean, I thought you had some kind of honor to defend, but in the end here we are."

"H-hey, that is not what-"

"It's okay, nobody will hold it against you, Zoro-kun, it is not your fault that you can't keep word."

"Listen to me, that isn't-"

"I do have to wonder about your other promises, though… did't you say something about becoming the worl-"

"FINE! I get it! I'll go fetch them!"

"Oh, I guess you are an honorable swordsman after all." Nami smirked.

"There is a reserved place in hell for people like you, you know?"

"Yes, yes, whatever. Now run along, will you?" she shooed him with her hand.

Groaning in defeat, Zoro set out after Mario as well.

* * *

(1)Though he nearly jumped all the time, it's sort of his thing, really

* * *

**A/N**

'guest', I'll have to take your word for it, because so far I haven't had the chance to play Dream Team :/

DocterM Thank you for the kind words :D

I mostly set up to write this fic because the premisse sounded so ridiculous in my head, I had no way not to write it.


	5. Chapter 5

"Ayeeeee! Let me go already!"

"Wah?"

"Don't just 'wah' me, what you think you are doing?!"

Mario stopped jumping for a second and put her down. He made a gesture as if he were picking something out of his nose (but didn't actually, because that was gross), then pretended to flick it at her. Next he put both his hands up and made a "Pshooom!" sound.

"W-wait, you mean you are helping me? Against Mr. 5?"

"Hm-hm." Mario nodded.

"Why?! We are enemies aren't we?"

Mario closed his eyes in thought.

"Hmmm…"

Then he opened them and nodded again.

"Hm-hm."

"And you are helping me, just like that? Why?! What's your reason?!"

"Hmm…" Mario started gesticulating wildly, and started rambling to the sound of;

"Atoratto rocuzzi ilta rottotorero metocchi rebaro, mettinni purarorero pocco mezzachi."

There were various reasons. First, and most importantly, she was going to die, and Mario couldn't stand seeing people die.

"Aguinni ratoreppato, pureppo li meazzi lirerore vicci."

Then there was the fact she was a princess, and rescuing princesses is about what he did 90% of the time, so his instincts kind of kicked in.

"Litotti adero rerocchi chemimmo vicuttio repporemarore."

Besides it's not like she, you know, actually did anything to him at all. Besides trying to use her female wiles and all that (not that he was going to judge).

"Alcucchi, mero mizzoni milzzano reponduo."

And in the end, what is an enemy anyway? Sure, there is the trying to kill you part and all that, but then there is the golfing and soccer playing, though we don't do that soccer thing anymore often because everyone always got too worked up on it.

"Brizzotto viccero."

Plus she looked like a nice person.

Mario smiled, having completed one of his longest speeches in a long time, but was kind of disappointed when the princess stared at him blankly.

Eventually she said:

"Wah?"

To which he nodded; that was a succinct way to put it.

She was going to protest when a "QUACK!" announced the arrival of Carue, and behind him, in the distance, the figure of the two pursuers could be seen.

Mario immediately grabbed her again, jumped from the rooftops to besides Carue, and let her go again.

"Waha~!"

She hesitated for a moment, then mounted the bird.

"Thank you."

Mario nodded, and turned to face the pursuers.

"I saw what you just did."

Mario turned quickly again; the burly woman was in the opposite side of the road, holding a giant piece of wood and blocking the exit. They were surrounded, and while he could easily take the princess to high ground again, he doubted she would abandon the bird.

"Ms. Monday!" the princess seemed uneasy, then to both her and Mario's surprise, the woman stepped aside to let her through.

"Just go." She said. "The port is right ahead. We will keep hold of them."

"But…"

The two pursuing agents were already close, and their dash gave way to a cool and collected walk.

"We will already be punished anyway. I might as well rebel and help a friend in need."

The princess stared at her in shock. The two agents were but a few feet away.

"JUST GO!"

Miss Wednesday jumped in surprise and made the bird accelerate. She only had time to mutter "thank you both", and then she was gone.

"So, you are a traitor as well, are you, Miss Monday?" the man in black asked.

"Hahaha, that's so funny. Traitors sticking together to the end." Miss Valentine commented.

"And you, fat man." Mr. 5 looked directly at Mario. "You have made a grave mistake." He was rolling up his sleeves. "You two have!" He suddenly charged towards Miss Monday, arm extended for a clothesline, which at first glance seemed like a terrible idea; she was nearly twice his size and three times his weight in pure muscle, so the most probable outcome from this attack would be a fractured arm.

But then his arm exploded, knocking her down instantly. Mario just jumped back and stared.

"I am an explosive man. Any and all parts of my body explode at my will."

The smoke around his arm cleared, and Mario noticed it was unscathed. So, dark skin, exploding at will and being fine, attacking a princess under the orders of someone else…

Mario hit the palm of his hands, understanding, and pointed an accusing finger.

"Wah!"

This guy was a Bob-omb! A slim, tall Bob-omb with arms and hair!

The man waved his right hand in front of his face dismissively.

"Didn't catch that, but I just know you got it wrong. I am a human bomb. I ate the Bomb-Bomb Fruit."

"Wah?"

He ate a Bob-omb?

"No, I'm still sure you got it wrong."

"Mr. 5, she is getting away, you know?" Miss Valentine said that still smiling. Obviously she didn't really think Miss Wednesday would get far at all.

"Fine, fine." Mr. 5 started picking on his nose again. Mario got ready to dodge when he noticed it wasn't aimed _at him_. He turned to see that Miss Wednesday and Carue were still visible at the end of the street, and about to receive a deadly booger in their backs.

"Booger…"

"Woah!" Mario's head flickered between attacker and victim, calculating the path the bullet would take.

"BULLET!"

"YAH!"

Mario jumped, and the booger hit him mid-air. The explosion tore his clothes a bit, and he fell to the ground a few feet back.

"MR MUSTACHE!"

Despite the soaring pain, Mario managed to raise his head a bit to notice the princess still at the end of the street, and did he just jump in front of a snot? Seriously? That was probably the lowest point of his princess-rescuing days.

Ms Valentine giggled. "Jumping in front of a bullet to save a princess, how romantic, don't you think?"

"Geh, what a waste of time." Mr. 5 was already picking another booger.

Despite the pain, Mario was trying to rise back up, but the attack had left him out of breath, and he was staggering noticeably.

"Oh, no, no, you stay still right there." The woman, Ms Valentine, walked up to him and stepped on his hand. And suddenly-

"WAAAAAAAAAAOOUCHOUCHOUCHOUCH!"

Suddenly her foot put so much pressure, Mario was sure his fingers would crack. He tried moving his hand away, but it was as if there was a rock on top of it.

"Hold him still, there's only so much snot I can dig at a time." He aimed the snot once again, "Booger… BULLET!" and fired.

The pain in his hand was terrible, he couldn't get up or turn his body in any direction, and he was having a hard time breathing, plus his consciousness was slowly drifting away again. Three times in a single day, what a bother. From behind him, he heard the explosion. So… that was it? She was dead, just like that…? Did he really… just fail to rescue a… princess? And this pain… oh yeah…. he was… ne..xt… right…? It… was… … getti… har… t… hink…

Suddenly the weight on his hand was lifted. The pain was still there, preventing him from moving, but the weight itself was gone

"Oi, oi, you idiot already caused enough trouble." He heard a familiar voice. "Because of your wild stunt I had to cut down a booger. A booger! You better appreciate this!"

It was the… swordsman…? Wha… his… name… gain? Zo… lo…?

There was a scream.

"ZOOOROOOO! YOU UNGRATEFUL BASTARD!"

Ah… that was... it...

He fainted.

* * *

**A/N**

This chapter is far too short. I don't like to have chapters less than 2000 words in lenght. But it was either this or filling it up with detailed descriptions of everything just for the sake of lenght, and I'm not doing that

People might recognize the pseudo-italian gibberish speech from the Mario & Luigi series. I... can't write pseudo-gibberish that well. Mario will continue to communicate mostly by short yelps, 'ah's, 'yaha's, 'mah's and especially 'wah's, unless he has something very important to say.

_Primo_, huh... kind of awkward you asked that question just before this chapter where Mario gets trashed and has to be saved. Huh. To answer it in more detail; right _now_, Mario is about Usopp's level of useful; that means he can probably take groups of minor characters alone and help in major fights. Having said that, I plan on making him getting stronger as the fic goes on. There is already a 'powerup' of sorts he'll get at Drum Island (which I am already writing, mind you. I like to give myself a huge headstart on fics; when I first published this one, I already was writing the giants of Elbaf.) It is kind of hard to find a balance between making Mario stealing the glory moments of other Strawhats (like, if Mario saved Usopp from a fight Usopp would eventually win, I think it would take away from Usopp's character) and making Mario so useless he would be... well, unimportant to the plot. But rest assured, by the time Alabasta kicks in, he will be strong enough to hold himself on the team, and if that fails, I have a backup plan. Kind of.

Also, in this particular case, I was having some author's block on how to solve the Zoro/Luffy fight with Mario awake, so I decided to just skip it entirely by having him be unconcious. Yay for lazy writing!

As for his nickname... well, among crewmembers, he will be known as "Red", because of the way he dresses. If you mean what the marines will call him on his wanted poster... well, I already have it figured out, but it would spoil the story in more than just one wayto just write it down here. So it is a mystery :D


	6. Chapter 6

The vulture and the otter drew his face as well. The boss wouldn't let them get away if they just 'assumed' he was unconscious.

For some reason, even though the otter tried its best, his portrait came out differently from the other's. Theirs was a perfectly drawn portrait of their faces, his was a shot of his entire body, jumping. And it was all so... square. Like his body was made of tiny squares.

The otter shrugged, it felt natural to portray him that way for some reason.

* * *

He woke up with a jump.

"WAHA!"

And landed in a pose ready to fight, but there was no one in sight. He was in a wooden room, and the gentle waving below his feet told him he must be back on the ship. Looking down at his hand, he noticed someone had done a terrible job of bandaging it.

"You are awake!"

The door was open, and the princess was looking at him.

"I was so worried! Back there you-"

He put his hands together and closed his eyes for a prayer, and she lost her cool.

"I'M NOT DEAD!"

He opened one eye, then jumped down from the bed, and slowly poked her cheek twice. Then he jumped and gave her a bear hug, laughing.

"WAHOO~!"

"H-hey?!" she was taken back, and almost unable to breathe; obviously wherever Mario came from, "personal space" was not a thing. She awkwardly patted him on the back. "H-hey, yes, it's good to see you t-too… YAH?"

He started spinning around the room, still holding her and laughing. The princess was alive! He hadn't let her die! …well, technically someone had saved her other than him, but the end result is the same!

"Is everything alright? We heard some screa-ah…"

"Oi, is everything alr-GAH"

A door on the other side of the room opened and Nami and Sanji stepped through, both suddenly stopping on their tracks as soon as they saw the scene.

"A-ah… I see, well… let's go, Sanji-kun." Nami started to awkwardly leave the room, dragging Sanji by the collar, who kept staring some point above Mario's head with a dark shadow over his visible eye. The princess struggled to get free and finally managed to take a step back.

"NO! Don't misunderstand! This was just a greeting!" there was some silence, then she turned to Mario "…right?"

Mario tilted his head. Well, what else could it have been? Weird people.

"I see." Sanji seemed to wake up from his daze, and lit up a cigarette. His hands were shaking. And suddenly, he was all the way across the room with his left foot on Mario's face. "AS IF! You shitty red fatso, what kind of person hugs women the first thing they meet! This is sexual harassment!"

"And as we all know, that if the ero-cook's job, so you can't go around doing it." Zoro had just appeared on the doorframe, with his arms crossed. Sanji turned to face him, ticked off.

"Oh, of course a shitty marimo like you would not know the difference between flirting gallantly and assaulting a defenseless woman." He blew some smoke on Zoro's face. Zoro grinned, also evidently pissed.

"Ah~? I remember her fighting way more than you that night." He scorned. "If anything, I think you are the damsel in distress here. Maybe next port we can buy you a big, frilly dress to wea-"

There was a lightning fast kick, which was blocked by a lightning fast sword, and they began fighting their way out of the room. Mario had not had enough time yet to adjust to the Strawhats' relationships, but after this display he mentally marked those two as "best friends".

Luffy walked in through the door, ignoring the fight taking place just behind his shoulders.

"Ah, Mario! You alright?"

"Yaha~!"

Luffy gave a huge grin.

"Shishishi, I knew you were a good guy from the start. You did say saving princesses was your job!"

The blue haired princess hadn't understood a thing Mario had ever said, so she was taken by surprise at this.

"Your job?"

Nami was also confused.

"You mean he is a knight?"

"Mah."

"Ah, he's a plumber."

"That has nothing to do with saving anyone." Both women sweatdropped.

"Oh, yeah! By that way, while you were sleeping, we were attacked! Here!" he showed him a hand-draw picture of a stick figure with a cowboy hat and two circles around the chest area the same size as its head. "If you ever see this woman, she is our enemy, got it!"

"He's never going to understand this drawing you did."

"Whatever! She tried to steal my hat! Hey, if anyone tries to steal your hat, it is her, understood?"

"Wah!" Mario nodded. Nami facepalmed while the princess smiled awkwardly.

"Also, we may or may not now all be on the hit list of some mob-like organization or another."

"Don't just glance over that part as if it's unimportant!"

"Eh? But it isn't?"

"Of course it is! There are people trying to kill him! Us! The crew!"

Luffy shrugged.

"So what's new?"

Nami raised her finger to argue, but then couldn't, then she fell on her knees depressed when reality hit her.

"When did being a target became commonplace in my life…?"

"Shishishi, there, there," Luffy patted on her head "tell you what, now that Red is awake you can ask him about those!"

"Wah?" Ask him what?

"Oh, yeah!" Nami immediately got back up, all signs of depression gone "forget the mob, who cares, onto the important matters!" She turned to face the plumber "How's your hand?"

He looked at the bandages. It prevented him from moving his hand at all, and was itchy, which is-

"Good, hey is there something I can do for you?"

Nami was closer, without seeming to have moved at all. She was still smiling, but there was something off.

"W-wah?"

"Yes, yes, I agree completely, by the way, you are my favoritest member of the crew, you know that?"

She was TOO close now. It is amazing how, despite not even understanding the meaning of the words 'personal space', Mario figured that out. Plus, her grin was giving him the creeps.

"So you can pretty please do me a favor…?"

She placed a hand on his shoulder, and he immediately felt like running away. Perhaps sensing this, she lifted him off the ground and carried him outside under her right arm, as she would carry some luggage.

"Mario-kun, can you please tell us _how these work_?"

He blinked. Oh, right.

The pile of item blocks was still on the deck, with a few brown ones scattered around from when Mario had tried to find something which would help in the fight (the star had been a stroke of luck, really). He was sure some of them had contained coins inside, and he'd left them lying around the deck, but they were nowhere to be seen.

The long-nosed kid (Aesop…? Mario couldn't quite remember) was sitting cross-legged on the deck with one of the smaller boxes in his lap, poking it with a screwdriver in one hand, scratching his head in confusion with his other hand, while using some sort of magnifying glass attached to his head to analyze it. Luffy was semi crouched to his side, having run out of the room earlier, and was looking at the block as well, while Vivi's duck, Carue, was staring from over his shoulder at the same thing. The long nosed boy was muttering.

"How did he open these? Or rather, did he open it at all? The surfaces are all smooth."

"Shishishi, it's a mystery! A mystery block from the alien!" Luffy laughed, then he looked up to see Nami holding Mario by her side as a ragdoll. The Italian plumber's survival instincts had kicked in and he dangling there without reacting, as a cat would if you grabbed it by the scruff in its neck. The princess was behind the two of them, looking somewhat worried. "Oi, Mario! What are these?"

Looking up, Usopp quickly raised to his feet. "Ah! We weren't trying to steal your coins! I definitely was not acting under Nami's orders to steal your coins!"

With her free hand, Nami knocked his and Luffy's head in rapid succession.

"The one time you should lie and you blow it up!"

"Why me too?!" Luffy's protests went unheard.

Nami put Mario down, or rarther, threw him up in the air, frustrated, and he did two flips before landing on his feet with a "Tadaa~". Usopp and Luffy clapped, but she didn't act impressed. Behind them, Zoro and Sanji moved past, still locked in a Dragon Ball Z-esque exchange of blows.

"Anyway, it's not stealing. You are part of the crew now, and I am in charge of the crew's money, which means your money is now mine."

"Wah!" Mario nodded and gave her a thumbs up.

(From the background, Usopp whispered "Oi, don't go accepting stuff like that as if it were common sense!")

"But in order for me to take care of your money, I need to be able to reach your money, so, how do you even open these things?"

Mario tilted his head. These people didn't know what a coin block was? He'd seen them all the time in all the galaxies he went to. How backwards was this planet?

He walked to a medium sized (about his waistline) block that was lying at the ground, raised his good hand up, and punched down on the cube in the same motion as someone trying to fix an old TV.

A coin popped out of it, without any opening, and the block became brown.

Usopp looked confused. "Blunt force? That is the secret to getting to your money? Doesn't sound safe at all."

Mario tilted his head again. What? Everyone knew money came from punching magical blocks that floated around. He vaguely remembered working for his money back in New York before falling into the one-way pipe that led him to the Mushroom Kingdom, but did not register the implications of this thought.

"Who cares, let me try!" Nami was again smiling wickedly, her eyes two giant bellies. She grabbed another block and slapped it.

Nothing happened.

She punched it.

Nothing happened.

She dropped it to the ground and started furiously kicking it, without any success.

Panting, she turned to Mario, "WHAT'S UP WITH THIS?!"

The plumber just shrugged with a "Eh?". From his experience, anyone applying enough blunt force to a item block would open it.

"Usopp, you try it!" she tossed the cube to the sniper, who almost let it fall surprised. He punched it lightly, as if it could explode. Nothing happened again.

"Put more muscle on it!" Nami was impatient.

"R-right!" the boy hit it with all his strength, but all that happened is that he let out a yelp and had a swollen hand. Behind him, Zoro and Sanji moved past, still amidst combat.

"Hahaha, nice one! Hey, let me try!" Luffy walked forward to the block. Looked down on it with a suddenly serious expression, then suddenly stretched his arms all the way up. This being Luffy, 'all the way up' meant his arm was reaching around the same height as the ship's crow's nest.

"MAMMA MIA!" Mario stared at his arm.

The rubber man brought the fist down on top of the cube, causing a small shockwave that rocked the boat.

The block not only let out a whole pile of coins and became brown, it now also had a fist-shaped dent on its top. All other blocks Mario had 'opened' in the past had, after changing color to a dark brown, also sported two slits that reminded people of frowning eyes. This one not only had the slit marks, it also had a small tear mark under the right one.

"Shishishi," the captain put his strawhat on his head "It's not hard, you just had to put a bit of strength into it."

"That was more than just 'a bit' of strength!" Nami complained.

Mario stared at the fist mark. Brick blocks, fine, they were easy to break, but he had never heard of a human doing more than just scratching a yellow block. Come to think of it though, he could count the number of humans he'd met after arriving at the Mushroom Kingdom using his fingers, and he wouldn't even need to remove his shoes to do so.

But that wasn't important right now. He suddenly turned to Luffy and pointed accusingly. "PAH!"

"Eh? I'm a rubberman." He stretched his cheeks to demonstrate.

"Ah." Mario nodded and lowered his hand, satisfied. From the background, Usopp, being the tsukkomi of the crew, slapped the air while saying "Don't just accept that either!"

"Anyway… Zoro! Sanji! Catch!" Luffy quickly grabbed two of the blocks and hurled them at the two fighters still going at it on the background.

"Hah?!" Zoro glanced at the blocks in midair, halfway through blocking a kick and thrusting a sheathed sword.

"Che!" Sanji did the same, halfway through dodging a sword and launching a kick.

In a flash, they stopped fighting and attacked the blocks.

Sanji's let out a single coin and had a small footprint on its now brown surface.

Zoro, however, had in a single stroke cut the block neatly in half. Its inside was not hollow, but rather as smooth and brown as the outside, which frankly only raised more questions. And instead of sad slits, the two halves fell down with small crosses where the 'eyes' would be.

From the middle of it, instead of a coin, a small, white and red-ish _thing_ fell down. It looked like a mushroom, if mushrooms were made of marshmallow. Also, if mushrooms had eyes.

This little thing had, and it shook itself before blinking cutely and looking around.

Usopp took a step back, staring at it. "O-oi, what is this thing now?!"

Mario tilted his head again. Oh _come on_, these people never saw a standard growth mushroom before?

It started crawling like a new born baby, in a straight line to Vivi's general direction. The princess jumped out of its way with a "Eek!", and the crew watched it crawl all the way past her to the opposing wall, where it hit its head with a "pomf". It turned around and started crawling on the opposite direction, unphased. Upon reaching the far wall, it did so again, moving in a new direction. Luffy's eyes were glowing;

"It's a baby alien!" the rest of the crew turned to face Mario with a few weird looks, who just shook his head negatively and waved it away.

Nami walked to the critter and crouched to have a better look.

"It isn't dangerous, is it?"

"Huh-huh." Mario shook his head again.

Nami took the mushroom on her hands. It stopped trying to crawl and looked up to her face.

Mario thought for a second and added. "Wah~"

"He said 'unless it is a purple one, then you'll die in a few seconds'." Luffy translated with a huge smile.

Nami froze for a few seconds before noticing this one was red. Sanji by now already had his right foot buried inside Mario's oddly malleable face, while the plumber was waving his hands around trying not to fall over, and going "Wawawawah!"

"You damned alien, tell people that before they touch it!"

Nami was going to interject, but before she could do so, the mushroom in her hand began glowing for a few seconds. It let out a "Meep!", then there was a 'pop' and it disappeared.

"I didn't do it!" she turned around to face the crew, and noticed something was odd. They all were looking at her with her mouths wide open (in Luffy's case, in a huge smile, and in Sanji's case, drooling) except for Mario, who couldn't see anything because there was a foot still stuck on his face. Also, and perhaps more importantly, they had all shrunk to the point their heads somehow barely reached her waistline.

"EEEH?!" she cried in surprise. Luffy began laughing and pointing at her.

"HUGE! NAMI, YOU ARE SOO HUGE!"

"THAT'S RUDE!" for some reason, despite the fact she was still perfectly proportional and that her clothes had grown with her, she felt the need to cover her body the best she could. "What happened here?!"

Zoro turned to Mario. "That's your doing?"

Mario removed Sanji's foor from his face with almost no effort now that the cook's attention was distracted, then said "Wah."

It meant "define 'my' doing".

"There is more of my beautiful Nami swan than there ever had been before~!"

"And Sanji, you shut up!"

"Hai, my swan~!"

"Someone make me small and cute again!" She was cleary not enjoying her new size and began having a tantrum.

"Oi, Nami, you are rocking the boat!" Usopp complained while holding to the mast. It was true: with her current size, the Going Merry was swaying this and that way at her smallest moves. She wasn't listening, though, being more and more panicked instead.

Mario slowly walked up to her, ignoring the rocking boat, then took a relatively small jump until he was parallel with her face. She stopped and looked at him with an "eh?"

Then, with his good hand, he gave her a light karate chop right in between the eyes.

"Eek!" she brought her hands to the area struck, even though it only smarted a little. She rubbed it before opening her eyes again "What was that for?! Ah…?"

She was back at normal size. Mario was standing in front of her, holding the mushroom in his hands, only now all the color had faded from it, making it pure white. It also seemed to have lost all energy and was now sleeping.

She recoiled when she noticed it.

"Is that thing a devil fruit of some sort?"

Mario tilted his head and scratched it with his eyes closed, going "wah?"

In the background, Zoro lost his patience. Besides Luffy, he seemed to be the one that best understood whenever Mario wah'd especially after they fought togheter.

"What do you mean you don't know what a devil fruit is, you obviously are a devil fruit user!"

"Eh?" Mario seemed genuinely confused.

"That thing you did, with the rainbow, that was a devil fruit power!"

"Rainbow?" Usopp seemed confused.

"Back on Whiskey Peak, this guy here turned into a rainbow and sent people flying on rainbow explosions!" Zoro pointed an accusing finger "He must have eaten the Rainbow-Rainbow Fruit. He is a Rainbow Man!"

"Really?!" Luffy seemed excited once again. "Oi! Do some rainbow things for us to see!"

Mario looked at Luffy, then at Zoro, then back at Luffy, then he signaled for Luffy to tilt his head closer and whispered "Mah" into it.

"Um, yes, I see." The boy nodded sagely.

"What? What is it?" Nami frowned. This speech disability of the new crewmember was getting on her nerves.

"He says Zoro is crazy."

"LIKE HELL I AM. You!" he pointed to Mario "Back in the island, when you ran to the ship, what did you do?!"

"Ah." Mario put his hands inside his suspenders and brought up what seemed to be a transparent starfish. Upon close inspection, it had eyes like the mushroom, and seemed to be sleeping.

"See, that thing, it made you into a rainbow!"

Oooh, so that is what the crazy-man was talking about. Mario nodded.

"Really? Show me!" Luffy's eyes were shining.

Mario looked at the star sleeping in his hand.

"Ma~h."

"Only works once? That's boring." He turned to Zoro and pointed an accusing finger "Oi, Zoro, you owe me one!"

"What the hell? Why?!"

"Being the Captain means I should get to see cool alien stuff before you! It's common sense!"

"Just there being an alien goes against common sense! Stop making stuff up!"

As the two warriors started making a scene, the recently revealed Princess couldn't help but frown.

"Should we really be fooling around like this?"

"Wah?" Mario, who was standing by her side, looked up at her. Other than him, it seemed only Nami had heard her; Usopp and Carue were both eating some popcorn Sanji had made while watching the Zoro / Luffy impromptu comedy act, the cook himself soon joining in.

"The situation is serious! We are in the middle of one of the most dangerous oceans in the world, and hiding from one of an organization of hitmen! How can you all just act like this?!"

Mario looked up at her, then scratched his mustache, thoughtful.

"Ah!"

He light up as if he had an idea.

"Wah!"

He held one finger up to get her attention, then grabbed one of the smaller yellow boxes, and pointed at it, then waited.

After a few seconds, Vivi frowned.

"Okay, it's a box, then what?"

Mario pointed at the crew, who were still messing around. Usopp and Carue were now wearing 3D cinema glasses while watching the pointless argument, while Luffy still explained the finer point of being a captain and how "magic too, I get to see magic before you! You owe me!"

"Yes, they are still too carefree! What is your point?!"

Mario nodded. Vivi and himself stared at each other for a few seconds.

Then he quickly turned around and hurled the box as hard as he could towards Luffy's head.

"WHAT ARE YO-"

Before the box could connect, Luffy had spun around and punched it back to Mario at about the same speed, who jumped and grabbed it with both hands, like a goalie. Luffy promptly turned back to Zoro to resume the list of things a captain should see before the first mate, which by now included 'elves, robots, superheroes, and those-things-that-are-half-fish-half-goat', as if nothing had happened.

Mario meanwhile smiled at Vivi, who just seemed confused.

"'Handle the dangers as they come, and once you've handled them relax until the next one arrived', or something like that." Nami said, walking closer and snatching the gold coin that had fallen from the punched block out of Mario's hands, before hiding it inside her cleavage.

Mario nodded to her and said "Ya~ah." While dismissively tossing the now brown box over his shoulder and at the sea.

"Mario here already got in the spirit. Or rather, I feel he had the same spirit even beforehand." Nami smiled, giving Vivi some juice Sanji had made. It had small shards of comet in it. "There is no point in worrying about a problem that hasn't happened yet, take things in stride, that sort of thing."

"But, they are not even paying attention to the sea!"

"Well, that is my job, isn't it? They wouldn't know what to look for."

"But…"

"Besides, it feels good to kick back and relax once in a while, doesn't it? This ship can really make you feel stress-free."

Vivi looked at the crew going at their shenanigans, and gave up, smiling.

"...true."

They enjoyed the moment before Luffy suddenly cut himself out of the list (Zoro had zoned out for a while already).

"Hey! It's that dolphin!"

"Again with the dolphin!" Nami sighed. "Well, now we are not in danger, so we can appreciate something THAT'S TOO BIG FOR A DOLPHIN!" she screamed as the gigantic mammal landed nearby, rocking the boat.

"LET'S ESCAPE!" Luffy said with a huge smile, having the time of his life.

"Aye!"

"Aye!"

"A-a-aye!"

"Wah?"

Mario stared at everyone running around, unsure what to do. Usopp eventually ran past him and shoved a rope at his hands. His fear of the alien had diminished upon Zoro describing how he saved the crew's sorry sleeping asses (his exact words).

"Pull this up! We need to set sail!"

"Yah!"

Ships are complicated business, Mario thought to himself, but he was always up to learning a new activity. Hah, back home the toads were already naming most sport events after him, 'Mario Golf', 'Mario Karting', 'Mario Strikers'(1)… why not Mario Boating?

* * *

(1) It was originally Mario Soccer, but honestly for some reason everyone got waaaaay too angry playing that and it came down to blows every few matches. Princess Peach had made its practice illegal soon enough.

* * *

**A/N**

It's weird, when I first wrote this chapter I was really satisfied with it, but re-reading it I just... am not anymore. Maybe it's because now that I am separating the story on chapters instead of one long block of text, I became aware of how sudden was the jump between whiskey peak action and Mario being silly on the boat.

I might eventually rewrite this to make it less jarring, but to be honest I just wished to be done with Whiskey Peak and advance the plot.


	7. Chapter 7

The plumber had so far shown to be very appreciative of heights, and that, coupled with his natural(?) jumping abilities, plus complete lack of knowledge on what to do in any other position of the ship, made him a perfect candidate for the crow's nest.

Or it would, if he, you know, could speak. As it were, only Luffy and to a small extent Zoro could understand him, and the swordsman still needed to see his hand gestures (1) to make it out.

So they gave up on that idea quickly enough. Mario's position on the crew was… erratic. He honestly went around doing his own thing, which usually meant helping with random shores, or at the very least not getting in their way too much. Plus he could obey orders without complaining at all.(2) So nobody got really too annoyed with him. Honestly, Zoro was kind of more useless than he was for day-to-day stuff, because he was always either training or sleeping.

Eventually they gave up and accepted Luffy's words that Mario was just the crews 'Jumpman'. That apparently meant he was a guy the crew had which could jump really high. Whoopee.

Still, they liked his company for the most part.

* * *

Little Garden, the second island of the Grand Line. They were going up a large river between two patches of jungle.

It wasn't little and it wasn't a garden, but then again, back in Dinosaur World, the Donut Plains were not plains nor they were made of donuts. Mario just decided that they were one of Those Things, and he commented so to the crew.

"Wah~." He said.

"Yeah, Whisky Peak wasn't made of Whisky either." Luffy nodded. "Remind me once we fight an Admiral or something to tell them they need to fire whoever comes up with these names."

"DON'T EVEN JOKE ABOUT FIGHTING ADMIRALS" Usopp screamed. They had just seen a giant tiger die from mysterious wounds, a giant bird-like not-bird, and Nami was having second thought about these trees. He wasn't in a mood for thinking of even more danger.

"W-we need to go to Alabasta quickly, and this place doesn't seem very safe, so let's all just stay in the boat before the…" she paused. "Where's Mario?"

"Haha, he jumped down a few meters back." Luffy laughed, looking at the jungle.

"He _WHAT._"

Zoro sighed.

"Yeah he does that, doesn't he. Like back when he saved her." He nodded at Vivi with his head.

"Oi! Don't you dare imply saving the BEAUTIFUL VIVI SCHWAN~ was a bad thing you damned moss head."

Zoro shrugged.

"It worked out in the end, but it was pretty stupid at the time." He turned to start at Vivi. "No offense."

She smiled sheepishly.

"Well I did try to kill you all."

"Ah, the past, the past." Luffy waved it away, "the most important thing is, Sanji, prepare me a lunchbox."

"LIKE HELL" Nami grabbed Luffy by the shoulders and started shaking him "THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IS WHY THE HELL DIDN'T YOU STOP HIM."

"Ah… Red said he was going to poop." Luffy's eyes lit up "Can you believe it?! The alien poops!"

"GROSS! Also, YOU ALREADY KNEW THAT!" She still remembered of their first meeting. Mario had just nodded 'yes' at the question.

"Aah, when nature calls, nature calls." Luffy stared at the jungle, excitedly "And now I have a calling… FOR ADVENTURE!"

Nami looked away, weeping.

"Why did I join this crew?"

Then Vivi approached them and looked at Luffy.

"Ah, I'll come too."

* * *

Mario had done his thing. Honestly, years of running entire kingdoms saving royalty taught him not to be picky when it came to places to... you know. It was something he omitted from his tales, mostly.

He was now in the process of walking through the forest, looking around mildly interested. The idea of returning to the ship kind of flew over his head; he was more used to keep going to one direction when he started, rather than turning back the way he came. Besides he knew the crew would be fine without him there.

He looked at his hand. Still bandaged, but it didn't hurt nearly as much now. Aaah… if he had one of those green mushrooms he could fix this in a jiffy. Still, he had a limited supply of boxes, and he wasn't going to open them all just like that- he could end up wasting precious…

"WAH!"

He tripped over something. Looking back, it was a crater. There was an item box in it.

He looked around; there were no other item boxes around. They seemed fairly rare in this planet, judging by the way the crew didn't even know what they were. Weird place.

Even this one, now that he looked from the crater, probably fell from the… the… huh… What _did_ happen when he reached the end of his last journey, again? He faintly remembered something exploding. And according to the crew he and his boxes fell from the sky, so… it stands to reason more boxes would fall from the sky? Maybe? He shrugged and hit this one with his good hand, no sense sweating details.

Something green popped out of it.

He smiled

Lucky!

* * *

"Luffy, get down from there!"

"Hahaha, it's fine, it's fine! See, he eats plants! Like a loser!"

Luffy was currently climbing the neck of a giant dinosaur, without much care for his well-being. A voice came from behind her.

"Wah?"

"Ah, Mario, could you talk some sense into Luffy, he is-" she turned around to face the plumber before screaming "_RIDING A DINOSAUR!_"

Mario was sitting on top of a green beast, the same size of Carue, who was currently trying to hide behind Vivi. The dinosaur extended a huge tonge and licked her face.

"Yoshi!"

"Waha!" Mario petted the dinosaur and gesticulated as if saying 'Now _this_ here is what you ride like a normal person, not ducks, get it?'

"Aaah!" Vivi whimpered, looking at the beast, then turned to look at Luffy from the top of the other beast "Aaaah!", then looked at Mario, with some small tears forming in her eyes "Aaaaaah!" Then looked at Luffy, who was _being swallowed whole_ "AAAAAAAH_!" then a GIANT__ came out of nowhere and cut the beast's neck_ to let Luffy out. **_"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH"_**.

Mario and Yoshi looked at each other and shrugged. What was up with her speech?

* * *

"GEGYAGYAGYAGYA, so, this guy here is an alien!"

"Wah~" Mario waved at the giant. He was sitting near Vivi and Carue, while all three watched as Dorry the Giant exchanged meals with Luffy, who was eating the meat of the dead dinosaur in an ironic twist of fate.

The most disconcerting thing about the picture, however, was that Mario's own dinosaur was also eating the dinosaur meat. And by 'eating' we mean swallowing whole chunks without chewing in a way that would make Luffy jealous. In fact Luffy was jealous, and trying to eat faster to make up for it.

"And this little guy here came out from one of those yellow things?" the giant petted Yoshi with a finger. The little dinosaur hummed in appreciation. "They fell from the sky in a light show just the other day after our battle! They stung like hell, too! GEEEEGYAGYGYAGYA!"

"Light show? What light show?" Luffy asked animated.

"Battle? What battle?" Vivi interrupted.

"Aaah, there was these bright lights in the sky, and then a bunch of candy fell! Then boxes! GEGYAGYAGYA, I thought I was going crazy!"

"And the battle?! What battle was it?"

"Ah, me and Brogy, we were dueling again! There was a dispute about a hundred years ago, and now we are fighting to the death! GEGYAGYAGYA!"

"What?! That's horrible!"

"No, that's honour! I wouldn't give up, and neither would my friend!"

"But a hundred years! Can you even remember why you started fighting?!"

The giant shrugged.

"Then what it the reason?! This is just mur-mmph!"

Suddenly Luffy had shut her mouth with an stretched arm.

"This is the way their honour tells to live, you can't judge it!"

"Still… Mario, help me here."

Mario, who had been staring at his dangling feet and kicking the air while sitting besides her, looked up at the giant and scratched his mustache.

"Wah."

"GEGYAGYAGYA, NO!" The giant looked at him laughing.

"Mah~ha."

"What, the three of them?!"

"Wahyah!"

"Hmm… A compelling argument, but what would you do with so much hair?"

"ARE YOU GUYS EVEN TALKING ABOUT THE DUEL ANYMORE?!" Vivi snapped.

Suddenly the earth shook when the volcano at the center of the island erupted.

"Ah, sorry, I've got to go, that's the signal for the fight!"

The princess was desperate by now.

"But you can't just go there and-!" Luffy shut her mouth again.

"This is bigger than us."

The giant walked a little before meeting with another, more rotund giant.

"Brogy!" he greeted with a giant sword.

"Dorry!" the other giant held a giant axe.

"Before we start, I just met a little man right now!"

"You too?! GEBABABABABA! My new friends gave me some ale!"

"GEGYAGYAGYA, tell me, Brogy, have you ever thought of brainding your hair?!"

"GEBABABA, what is this now, Dorry?! No, I have not thought about it!"

Dorry looked back over his should.

"You heard him, little alien, I tried! GEGYAGYAGYA!"

Mario looked at Vivi and shrugged apologetically. She sweatdropped.

"I'm not even going to ask."

* * *

(1) It was made slightly easier due the fact Mario seemed unable to speak without gesticulating, even to Luffy.

(2) To be honest Usopp felt it was kind of creepy how Mario never seemed to be in a bad mood. Like, even Luffy pouted and acted up if he had to wake up early, but Mario was just… well, already up before anyone else was, to be honest, and always greeted them cheerfully. The sniper sometimes wondered if the plumber slept at all.

* * *

**A/N**

You know, I'm not above begging for reviews.


	8. Chapter 8

It was now after the duel.

In all honesty, Mario never bothered with honour. It was a concept almost foreign to him, yet it seemed to matter for the giants and Luffy.

Oh, he understood 'pride', as in 'I am proud of my older brother for trying his best', but to kill or die defending your honour? In a word, he would describe it as "Wa~h".

They had just learned that it would take one year for the log pose to register this island. The plumber took it in stride, as always; in his experience things impossible to solve work out sooner than later.

The princess wasn't taking it as easily.

"How are we even going to survive among dinosaurs for one year?" she sobbed in her hands "Scratch that, even if we survive, my country will have fallen by then!"

"Yeah, one year is too much!" Luffy agreed, though he didn't seem nearly as upset. "Isn't there any other way?"

"Well me and Broggy are fighting for an Eternal Pose to take us home to Elbaf. Do you want to steal it from us?"

"Nah, that's not where we want to go."

"GEGYAGYAGYA, well said! Then why don't you just risk it?! If luck's on your side then you'll get there!"

Luffy cheered up at this.

"Hey, you're right, all we have to do is risk it, then! Shishishi"

"GEGYAGYAGYA!"

Then his face exploded.

"WHAT?!"

"THE RUM EXPLODED?!"

"QUACK!"

"MAH!"

"YOSHI!"

As the giant fell back, Vivi began to panic.

"D-did the other giant do this?!"

"Of course not!" Luffy retorted, "They have been fighting for 100 years on their honour! Do you really think they would resort to this?!"

"You are right…" they turned to see Dorri standing unsteadly, and glaring at them "but then, who did it… there is nobody else… it could only have been you…"

"W-wait, _US_?!" Vivi screamed, as the giant started to draw his sword "We didn't do it, I swear!"

"There is nobody else…" the giant panted, unstead "Broggy wouldn't do this…"

"Vivi, it's useless." Luffy said, standing in front of her. "He won't listen to reason now. Mario."

The plumber looked at the captain.

"Hm?"

"Make sure Vivi doesn't get hurt."

"Wah." Mario nodded.

"W-wait, you can't just fight a giant! The size difference is too big!"

Mario dismissed her worriers with a wave of his hand. He had experience fighting giants, too. The size difference was two-fold; the bigger target is stronger, but the smaller target is harder to hit. The captain would be fine. Probably. He shrugged.

"Mah."

"Shishi, it's just as Mario says."

And true enough, when Dorri struck his sword, Luffy could easily dodge it, jumping over the blade and countering with a flurry of attacks of his own, each punch severely hurting the giant despite the size differences.

The fight was impressive, but it ended quickly enough, with a unconscious giant and a very upset Luffy. He let his feeling be known;

"I am very upset about this!" He let the others know.

Vivi, now knowing about his feelings on the situation, added to the conversation;

"Eh?"

"The other giant didn't poison the rum." Luffy frowned "And no one from ym crew would ever do that!"

"Then… there must be a third party on the island."

Right on cue to make the revelation dramatic, the volcano erupted again.

Which had also the unfortunate side effect of waking the giant again, only this time he wasn't focusing on the strawhats anymore.

"Time… to fight…"

"Oi! You can't fight now! You've been sabotaged!" Luffy protested.

"Gegya… I'm still a warrior… with the honor of Elbaf...!"

"But-"

The argument was quickly over when Luffy was trapped under a dinosaur skull.

"My honour as a warrior is about the only thing I have left. You humans barely live 80 years… you have no knowledge of the world!" He turned to go away, before adding "But you are genuinely concerned. I am sorry for suspecting you."

And with that, he went to duel.

"H-hey, where is Carue?!"

Well now that was a non-sequitur. Mario looked around. Yoshi was still around, but the bird was nowhere to be seen.

The plumber nonchalantly walked to the dinosaur and opened his mouth, then looked inside it, then turned to Vivi and shrugged.

"Wah."

"YOU MEAN THIS WAS A POSSIBILITY ALL ALONG?!"

At this moment, Usopp burst out of the trees, crying.

"HEEEELP! NAMI WAS EATEN BY A DINOSAUR!" then he ran face-first into Yoshi "AAAAAH, THE CULPRIT!"

Mario walked to Yoshi and looked inside his mouth again, before shaking negatively to Usopp.

"YOU MEAN YOU KNOW THIS THING EATS HUMANS?!" Vivi yelled.

Usopp was now playing possum, muttering "if I don't move he'll leave me alone" over and over. Yoshi licked his face playfully, causing the sniper to whimper "eeeh, he's tasting me!"

Vivi karate-chopped him 'awake'.

"Stop playing games you three, what was that thing about Nami?!"

"Aaah," Usopp glanced again to the dinosaur, but since neither of the three strawhats seemed to mind it he put it aside "we were running through the forest from a dinosaur when suddenly she is gone, just like that!"

"Calm down," Vivi interrupted, "Have you checked around the area?"

"IT'S FULL OF DINOSAURS! Of course I didn't! Even if it wasn't a dinosaur, it could only have been a monster!"

"No… it could be Baroque Works again." Vivi countered, "Someone did sabotage the duel."

"They _WHAT?!_" for the first time since they met, Mario saw Usopp lose his cool. Or at least lose his cool in a way that did not mean getting scared.

"T-the rum," Vivi explained, taken back his reaction, "someone put explosives inside of it."

"And the 100 years duel will end because of _this?!_"

As if on cue, there was a scream from the jungle,

"I GOT YOU NOW, DORRI!"

Followed by a giant gush of blood.

There was a moment of silence as the strawhats took this development in.

"**WHO DID THIS?!**" Luffy suddenly screamed, **"SHOW YOURSELF!"**

"Ah, that would be us."

From the edge of the jungle, Mr. 5 and Miss Valentine appeared, dragging a heavily wounded Carue, which they tossed ahead.

"You can have this thing back, we don't need it anymore."

"Carue!" Vivi ran to the downed bird, "Why did you do that to him?! He didn't do anything to you!" Vivi snapped. In the background, Usopp was asking Mario who were these two, to which the plumber answered by pretending to pick his nose then saying "boom!". That didn't help much.

"No, he didn't. He just pissed me off." He kicked the downed bird. "Against and again, just what he had to do was cry to attract you alone, but nooooo, he just had to play the tough bird act."

"You _tortured_ him?!"

"It. We tortured _it._"

Before Vivi could protest, Usopp interrupted.

"Are you the ones who sabotaged the rum?!"

"Hmm?" Mr. 5 turned to Miss Valentine. "Is Pinocchio on the hit list too?"

"Nah, but he's still one of them. We should finish him."

"ANSWER ME!"

Mr. 5 turned annoyed at the sniper.

"So what if we did?"

"You destroyed all the honour of that duel!"

Usopp and Vivi both got into fighting stances. Mario looked at them both for a few seconds, before doing a half-hearted battle pose. It's not that he didn't want to fight these two, it's just that he was never good at posing for battle.

"Eat this! Explosive Star!" Usopp launched a small ball with his slingshot, which exploded on Mr 5's face. "GOTCHA!"

From the smoke of the explosion, Mr. 5's voice started mocking;

"You call this an explosion? _This_ is an explosion." He launched a booger at Usopp.

"USOPP!" Luffy cried, still stuck and unable to help. About a 30 meters above the Sniper, Ms. Valentine got ready to fall. There was a whistling sound from Mario, which caused Yoshi to arch his back.

"Hahaha! Pityful! 10,000 kilog-"

As she talked, Mario jumped on the dinosaur's back. Yoshi, on his part, pushed him up, which, when coupled with Mario's jumping prowess...

"YIIIIPEEEEE!"

...launched him much further above the ground. Ms. Valentine was surprised by seeing Mario pass her on his way _up_, above her head. She looked down to confirm she was, indeed, still 30 meters on the air, then back up.

"HOW DID YO-" the last thing she saw was the fat man apparently _stopping_ mid air a few centimeters above her head, before doing a frontflip and plummeting down butt-first into her face.

Both crashed, narrowly missing Usopp's downed form.

"GROSS! DON'T ATTACK PEOPLE WITH YOUR BUTT! AND GET OFF ME!" She started struggling under the Italian's weight.

"A pet dino? Amusing. But I would do what she says if I were you." Mr. 5 warned. Mario then noticed he had the princess hostage. Reluctantly, he hopped up from Miss Valentine's back. The woman made a motion to kick him when she was up, but decided better not to try anything.

"That a good boy. We don't anyone her to die. Yet." He snorted. "Or at least that is Mr. 3's orders."

"The wax-man?!" Vivi exclaimed.

"That is about all you need to know, really." Mr. 5 took a booger and aimed at Mario, still holding Vivi's hands behind her back with his other hand. "If you dodge, we break her arm, got it?"

"…mah."

He exploded.

"Oh, and while at it." Mr. 5 handed Vivi to Miss Valentine and walked up to the downed figure of Mario. "This is here is for that bump in the head." He got ready to kick open the plumber's head, before he heard a muffled "eep!" from behind him.

He turned to see Miss Valentine halfway down Yoshi's throat, headfirst. Her feet were kicking feebly in the air. Vivi had falled on her butt and was staring disgusted at the spectacle.

"AT LEAST CHEW!" she yelled annoyed.

Yoshi stoped swallowing to look at her, wondering if he heard that right, before noticing Mr. 5 was aiming at him.

"BOOGER BULLET!"

The dinosaur quickly spat the droll-covered Baroque Works agent, and, with a toad-like tongue, grabbed the booger mid-air abefore swallowing it.

"Yoshi! :D"(1)

"Shishishi, nice going, dino!" Luffy cheered from under the giant skull.

Mr. 5 stared at the reptile for a few seconds.

"Two things. First; gross. Second; I'm pretty sure that exploded inside of you."

Yoshi burped some smoke. A nerve tick appeared on 5's forehead.

He dashed at the dinosaur, and the reptile's tongue lashed itself around his waist.

"OH NO YOU DON'T!" He spread both arms and legs to make himself too big to be swallowed, then used the momentum of the pull to slam and hug around Yoshi's neck.

"Hey, watch out!" Luffy called, but it was too late.

"BIG BANG!"(2)

5's whole body exploded, revealing, after the smoke settled, that the dinosaur wasn't nearly as resistant on the outside as he was on the inside, and had fainted.

"There we go. As for you," he threw another booger at Vivi, who had begun to run, causing her to trip. He shoved his finger on his nose, frowning "Damn, out of ammo." He sighed, before walking up to Luffy.

"Anything to say?"

Luffy showed him his tongue.

"You suck."

Another tick. Mr. 5 kick-exploded Luffy. And again. And again. And again.

"Just die already!"

After the 11th explosion, Luffy finally fainted.

* * *

It was now later.

Mario woke up. Okay, that cannibal Bob-omb guy was starting to annoy him. He tried moving his arm but it stung too much.

"Owowowowow!"

"Aaah, Mario's up too." He heard Usopp say weakly. The sniper had been buried during the fight (or after it, he wasn't sure), leaving only his shoulders and head above ground.

"Hey, Red, you want to get back at those losers?" Luffy asked weakly.

Get back at people? That wasn't really Mario's thing.

"Mah..."

"Ah… then, do you want to rescue the princess?"

Ooooh, when you put it that way.

"WAH!" he said, trying to get up but falling down again.

"Shishishi, that is the spirit!" Carue at this point got up and started pecking around Luffy, trying to free him. Yoshi also got up and started to free Usopp.(3) "Ah, birdie, you want revenge too?"

"QUACK!"

"Good." Luffy smiled, the energy finnaly returning to him. "Then lets pound those guys into the ground!"

* * *

(1) A.N.: Forgive me, I could not properly express the situation without the smile.

(2) This isn't a canon attack.

(3) He did it mostly by wrapping his tongue around the sniper and pulling him up towards his mouth.

* * *

**A/N** Glad to see begging for reviews worked :D Thank you for the kind words Feldoran.

I'll try to add Mario's moveset from the Smash series little by little, as well as some moves from the RPG series, though I really want to focus more on him jumping on people's heads because that is what I think of when I think 'Mario fighting'

**A/N2 **I edited the chapter to replace the giant Broggy's name, which I had misspelt all the goddamn time.


	9. Chapter 9

"ARE YOU NUTS?! HOW COULD YOU EVEN FACE THEM WITHOUT YOUR LEGS?!" Nami yelled. She, Vivi and Zoro were currently trapped in Mr 3's attack, which would slowly turn them into living statues. Zoro proposed the logical way out and decided to do like a coyote, amputing his limb.

"Ah? Would you rather die a painful death?"

"W-well, no, but?"

"What about you, giant?"

Brogy, who had been impaled to the ground through his hands with giant wax swords, looked at Zoro as if he had grown a second head. A beautiful, amazing second head.

"What, you really think they'll do it?" Mr 5 commented. Mr 3 snorted.

"It's a bluff. No human could possibly do that to their own bodies."

"GEBABABABABABA! You are a very brave tiny human! And here I was ready to give up!" Brogy, the giant, began to large ham his way back to life, as giants are wont to do. "VERY WELL! LET US DO IT!"

"Well said!" Zoro raised his katana, facing down towards his legs.

"Wait a minute! I-… I'll do it too!" Vivi interrupted.

"Oh?" Zoro smirked "Then let us not delay!"

Mr. 3 had progressively lost his cool watching the scene.

"AS IF I WOULD EVER LET YOU DO THAT!"

The swords went down!

"YAHOOOOOO~"

"YIIPEEEEE~"

"MMMMMPHHHH!"

"QUAAAAAAACK!"

From the forest burst Luffy, riding Carue, and Mario, riding Yoshi, and Usopp, who could not scream in defiance because his whole upper body was stuck inside Yoshi's mouth while he kicked feebly.

Their momentum caused them to dash past the scene and crash on the other side of the forest.

"Wat?" Mr. 5 deadpanned.

The 5 warriors got back up and ran back the way they came. Usopp was now free, if covered in drool.

"You guys!" Nami cheered.

Usopp took a step forward.

"Brogy-sensei, I am here to avenge your honour!"

The giant stared at him.

"Usopp…"

"Yeah! Crush those guys and free us already!" Nami yelled to Luffy in specific.

"Yosh!" Luffy hit his open palm. "Time to kick these guy's butts!"

A man with a 3 in his head walked up to them.

"You mean _you_ are the terror of the east blue? Those Marines must really be losing their ed-"

"Man your hair looks stupid!"

"SHUT UP!"

"It looks like a number and is on fire!"

"I SAID SHUT UP! I'M SENSITIVE ABOUT THAT!"

"YOU GUYS STOP PLAYING AROUND AND RESCUE US, WE'LL DIE HERE!" Nami yelled from the giant trap.

"Oh, yeah" Luffy turned to Mario, "go do your thing."

"Wah!" Mario nodded before jumping up the cake-like trap to rescue royalty and kick dragon-turtle-king's ass. And he was all out of dragon-turtle-king asses.

"Oh, no you won't!" Mr. 3 got ready to stop him before Luffy extended his leg for a kick.

"Silly hair, your fight is with me!"

"You know, I could handle this myself." Zoro commented as Mario approached.

The plumber stared at him for a second, then stared at his half cut legs, then back at him with a blank face.

"…well I could!" the swordsman snapped.

"Aaaah, Mario-kun, it is so good to see you! Use one of those alien things from those boxes to quickly free us!" Nami said with a huge smile.

"Wah!"

Mario immediately knelt down at their feet and started scratching the wax with his hands like a dog.

"LIKE THAT WILL SOLVE ANYTHING!"

"Mario-san, please be careful" Vivi said "your hand is still in pretty bad shape from last time!"

In all truth his bandaged hand was bleeding a little, but he paid it no mind. Zoro just kept his arms crossed, as his own half-cut legs bled off, before saying;

"Are you aware there is a dinosaur standing right behind you?"

"Yoshi!"

Nami screamed.

"Wait, wait, calm down, this one is friendly!" Vivi's pleas fell on deaf ears; Nami was nearing the panic point of no return.

Then Yoshi extended its tongue inside Nami's pockets and pulled out one of the gold coins from Mario's boxes, before swallowing it whole, which instead sent her past the rage point of no return.

"YOU GIVE THAT RIGHT BACK YOU OVERGROWTH LIZARD!"

Yoshi just licked her face in appreciation, before turning to Zoro and launching his tongue towards Wado. The swordsman grabbed it mid-air.

"Don't. Even. Think about it."

"Y-yoffi" the dino muttered, unable to remove his tongue.

"Good." He released the tongue, and Yoshi scrambled to hide behind Vivi. "How's progress, Red?" Zoro looked down to Mario.

"Tadah~"

He proudly showed that he managed to scratch some of the floor. In the few seconds he did so, the layer of wax from the air caused the scratch to disappear.

"USELESS!" Nami cried.

"Uh… Mario-san… are you feeling well?" Vivi asked.

"Wah?"

Being shorter than the other three, Mario was by now almost covered in wax as well. He didn't seem to notice it at all.

"Aaaah, this is the end, isn't it?" tears strolled down Nami's face, she turned to Zoro, who was striking a pose. "And what are _you_ doing?"

"If I'm going to become a statue, I want to look good."

"Stop playing around!"

Zoro sighed.

"All right, Red, this is leading nowhere. Instead of freeing us, try destroying the trap."

Mario looked at the swordsman, then at the giant pole behind him, then scratched his mustache. All his movements by now seemed awfully mechanic, due the wax restricting his muscles.

"AND HURRY UP OR YOU'LL BE THE FIRST TO GO!" Nami snapped.

"Ma~ha!" a lightbulb appeared on Mario's head, and he signaled for Yoshi to approach. The dinosaur did so, while still keeping distance from Zoro. They both walked up to Nami.

"Uh? What is it?"

Mario extended his hand, as if to receive something.

"Ah?"

"Wah!" he made a gesture to her purse.

"I think he wants you to give him the coins."

"ARE YOU REALLY ASKING FOR PAY FOR SAVING SOMEONE AS BEAUTIFUL AS ME?!"

Mario's head tilted to one side, in confusion. There was a small 'crack' around his neck, as the wax had by now covered him almost entirely.

"Just give him the damn things, would you? They were his to begin with." Zoro complained.

Before Nami protested, Mario opened her purse and started taking a seemingly infinite amount of coins out, tossing them to Yoshi, who began catching them with his tongue and swallowing at record speed.

"H-Hey! Stop that! My precious treasure!" Nami cried, but her arms were too frozen by now for her to do anything. By now the coins had stopped, and Mario was tossing out random objects he found inside the purse.

"…how did you even fit all of this in there?" Zoro muttered, to which Vivi answered "Women's secret."

Fashion magazine, lipstick, sunglasses, an orange, reading glasses, another orange, quill and paper, and Nami's "?".

Mario did a double take before throwing the last one and stared at it. Hey, he remembered finding something like that in Peach's castle once, only nobody ever told him what i-

"DON'T STARE AT THAT, IT'S PERSONAL!" Nami cried.

"Mr. Mario, how could you just wave that around!" Vivi reproached.

Mario looked at Zoro, who was snickering, then shrugged and tossed it back for Yoshi to eat.

"I hope that was clean." He heard the swordsman comment, and there was a death glare from Nami that made it clear what she would do if she could still move her arms.

Not that the plumber noticed, who now turned to face Yoshi expectantly.

The dinosaur had both cheeks bulging comedically from everything he had put into his mouth, without swallowing. Then in a single movement everything went from his stomach, where all the apparent mass disappeared halfway through his neck.

Nothing else happened.

"Hmmm…" Mario looked thoughtful, then turned to Nami, scanned her up and down, before climbing up to her frozen shoulders ('h-hey, get off me!') and removing her earrings, tossing it to the dinosaur.

Upon swallowing them, the dinosaur let a happy cry out, before frowning and-

"Is it taking a dump?" Zoro commented.

"Mario…" a dark shadow loomed over Nami's eyes, "if I ever made out of this alive… you will have some explaining to do…"

"Yoshi!" There was a satisfied cry as the dinosaur finished his business. Only, instead of poop, they noticed it laid an white egg with green dots.

"It was female all along?!" Vivi asked, surprised. Mario looked at her, frowned then shook his head negatively.

"Mah?"

"…no, of course that would make too much sense." She muttered.

The egg immediately hatched into… a red mushroom?

"THAT MAKES EVEN LESS SENSE!" Nami complained, "HOW DO THEY REPRODUCE, THEN?!"

"Ahh… Wah~" Mario gesticulated to the effect of "well, when papa yoshi and mama yoshi love each other very much"(1)

"IT'S GETTING AWAY, YOU!" Zoro yelled, and Mario turned (with some difficulty, since now he looked more like a pile of wax with eyes and a mustache) to notice the mushrrom has started baby-walking its way away from the four. He immediately stopped explaining the finer points of Yoshi biology to pick it up.

There was a small 'pop!' and the mushroom glowed and disappeared, followed by a sound not unlike 'glurp-glurp-GLURP' as the plumber grew to be as big as Aokiji. Not that any of them knew how tall Aokiji was, on account of nobody ther having met Aokiji yet. But if they did, they'd think 'yup, he sure is as tall as Aokiji'.

"YIIIHA!" He cried victorious as the wax around his body burst from the pressure of growth, freeing him.

The action did not go unnoticed by the Baroque agents and strawhats still locked in battle.

"W-what?! I'm possible! Who ever heard of a devil fruit like that?!" Mr. 3, who at some point seemed to have created a robot-like armor to fight in, yelled frustrated, before being punched by Luffy, who cheered;

"Shishishi, nice going Red!"

"Nice! Now break this thing down!" Zoro commanded, to which Mario nodded and… jumped up high, 10 meters above the trap.

The three stuck strawhats looked up. Nami was the first to speak;

"Wait, he's not going to… is he?"

"…he wouldn't." Zoro said.

Mario, like he did before while facing Miss Valentine, stopped mid-air and began falling ("HE IS!" the three yelled) butt-first on top of the trap, causing it to break and crumble under his mushroom-improved mass. The candles which were spinning on top of it fell inwards, and the who structure burst into flames.

Mr 3 whined "N-no, with that fire the wax around them will-…!"

"Yes!" Usopp stopped running from Mr.5 and Miss Valentine to look at the crumbles. "The wax will melt right away at that rate!"

"BOOGER BULLET!"

"AGH!" Usopp dodged at the last second.

"Don't look away from me, coward."

"C-coward?! T-take this! Exploding Star!" Usopp used his slingshot to fire a small bomb at the enemy, who just swallowed it.

"And stupid, too. Did you forget explosion don- ack!" Mr. 5 suddenly grabbed his own throat, sweating. Usopp sneered.

"You're right, I am a coward. But I a better liar than a coward! That was my Hot Sauce Star!"

Mr. 5 started spitting fire comically.

"Why, you, I'll" he lunged at Usopp, just as…

"ONI GIRI!"

…Zoro burst out of the flames, covered in fire, and cut him up. He sheathed his three swords and looked back at the mass of flames.

"Let's make one thing very clear, Red. I. Was not. Saved by your butt. This never happened. This particularly never happened whenever that shitty cook is nearby. I mean it."

"Ma~ah…"

The hulking figure of Mario came out of the flames, shrugging. What was up with this planet and their fear of butts? It was a legitimate weapon. Everyone used it back home.

"Mario-kun." Nami suddenly grabbed his suspenders behind his back. Despite his mushroom-enhanced size and strength, she managed to hold him in place with a supernatural strength of her own. A cold shiver came over his body. "I think it is time we discussed your recent actions regarding my belongings." She continued in a sweet voice.

"M-mah?"

"No, Mario-kun, I don't think you will be able to talk your way out of this."

"W-wah?"

Her head faced up, smiling, though her eyes held the fires of hell itself.

"Yo~ou owe me~" she sang, before glaring "…_get it?_"

The fear caused Mario to shrink. Back to normal size, that is; the now colorless mushroom popped out of him and started crawling towards the forest, where it was forgotten by the plot(2). He nodded.

"Good." She returned to her normal self.

"GEBABABABA! Tiny women sure are scary!" the giant, now also free from wax, rose up.

"Everyone here?" Vivi asked, coming out of the fire.

Nami looked around "Luffy and Mr. 3 are missing."

"Then it's fine, Luffy won't lose to someone like that." Zoro shrugged.

* * *

And sure enough, soon Luffy was back, along with Carue. The crew stood there, victorious, as the giant cried a rainbow for his fallen friend.

Who woke up, surprising all.

"It looks like I fainted…" he mumbled incoherently.

"DORRY?!" Brogy hugged his friend "But how?!"

"Ouchouchouch, careful Brogy, the wounds are still fresh, GEGYAGYAGYA!" he laughed, "It probably was our weapons!"

Brogy wiped a tear

"Indeed! Elbaf's weapons are great, but even they cannot stand a 100 year duel! GEBABABABA!"

"GEGYAGYAGYA, you knock me down just once and are this happy, Brogy?!" Dorry slapped his own knee.

"GEBABABABA, hey, hey, you were the one who didn't notice the wax on the ground, my friend!"

"YOU WANT TO REPEAT THIS TO MY FACE, YOU BASTARD?!"

"YOU WHAT MATE?!"

"YOU ARE ALREADY FIGHTING AGAIN?!" Nami raged from the ground floor.

* * *

It was now later, the strawhats were having a party with the giants, eating onigiris that were stolen from Miss Golden Week's picnic basket

Mario threw one at Yoshi, who grabbed it midair with its tongue and swallowed whole.

"You're letting it stay here?" Nami asked, looking at Yoshi. The plumber looked at her like she had grown a second head.

"Mah."

"Dinosaurs can't be pirates." Luffy said, as he layed sideways on the ground holding his head on one hand while eating an onigiri. "That's just common sense."

"I don't want to hear that from you of all people." She sweatdropped. Yoshi's tongue flew to the onigiri in Luffy's mouth and stole it, right before Luffy stretched his hands to steal it back, yelling "Hey, that's mine damnit!"

At this moment Sanji burst from the woods, skipping happily.

"Nami-saaaan~ Vivi-schwaaaaan~"

Oh yeah, that guy still existed, Mario thought to himself.

"HEY WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?!" he pointed to the giants "ARE YOU MR. 3?!"

"How do you know about that?" Nami asked.

Explanations later, turns out Sanji was not being nearly as useless as Mario (and Usopp and Zoro) had thought, and in fact managed to talk with and trick Mr. 0 into thinking they were dead.

"That's good but…" Vivi became depressed "but we are still stuck. If we just had a way to get out of here!"

"What? Why? Also, I found this thing in their house." Sanji commented, confused, while holding an eternal pose to Alabasta. "…what?" he added, seeing as everyone was speechless.

"YES! WE CAN LEAVE!"

"THANK YOU SO MUCH SANJI-KUN!"

"SORRY FOR DOUBTING YOU!"

"LET'S GO!"

Then Yoshi's tongue grabbed the Eternal Pose.

Everyone stopped mid-cheering and stared.

He swallowed.

"…GET HIM!"

That night, all through Little Garden there resounded the laughter of two giants, as they watched their little friends chasing a dinosaur.

* * *

(1) The gesture started by involving an upwards finger on his left hand while his pointing finger and his thumb made a circle on his right hand He never got so far as to explain how these two seemingly unrelated gestures would make sense, and neither of the crewmembers made a point of asking him again.

(2)Don't worry, it lived a long life full of adventures which Oda would draw in cover stories. That or it got eaten by a monster right away.


	10. Chapter 10

It was the next day. With a lot of care and Mario's expertise, they managed to remove the log pose from Yoshi without hurting him. They hurt him later anyway because goddamnit stupid dino.

Mario was now petting the poor thing as it laid down in the ground near the ship with massive bumps on its head.

"Don't you even _dare_ bring that thing onboard!" Nami screamed from the deck.

Pft, philistines, they don't know the beauty of Yoshis, do they boy, do they?

"Wah."

But they were right, the sea was not a place for a Yoshi. Here he could live among his kind.

Mario stared as a realistically-looking T Rex walked by.

Well, of kind similar enough.

…wait…

A few minutes later Mario was bugging Sanji while gesticulating wildly.

"Apropello peromenazzo pratti muzzi!"

"What?" Sanji deadpanned back.

"Prepozzio mericollatico popporeporepopollo!" Mario pointed to Yoshi.

"…don't know if that's edible."

"WAAAAAH!" Mario shook his head, frustrated.

"Shishishi, he wants you to make a meal for it!" Luffy said, walking into the kitchen and rummaging through the freezer.

"Aaaahn? Feed the thing which caused Nami-chan~ and Vivi-swan~" he did a little twirl "so much grief last night? Why should I?" He finished the sentence kicking the fridge door shut and trapping Luffy's fingers on it. "Meal's later."

Vivi, who was sitting by the table, commented;

"Well, he did help save us from the trap yesterday."

"He did eat all the things in my purse." Nami countered, annoyed. She was sitting across from Vivi. In the background, Luffy finally managed to get his hand free and was now blowing into his swollen red fingers.

"Half the things in that purse were Mario's to begin with." Usopp muttered, sitting on the ground outside the open door and tinkering on his slingshot.

"Did you say something?!" Nami snapped.

"Nothing ma'am!"

"Come on, Nami, you know Mario wouldn't have done it if there had been any other way to save us. Right, Mario?"

The plumber shrugged. Sure, let's go with that.

"…aaah, fine." She sighed, then snapped her fingers "Sanji!"

"Haaaai, my beautiful swan!" Sanji said smiling, with one foot buried deep inside Luffy's face while the later tried to claw his way near the fridge.

"Do something for the dinosaur."

"Anything for you, my love~!" He said, kick Luffy out of the door, and turning towards Mario. "So, what do you have in mind?" he asked in a professional tone.

Later on, Mario fed Yoshi a fruit salad with the exact amount of fruit needed for it to lay more eggs. These one didn't hatch right away; it would take a few months.

When papa yoshi and mama yoshi love each other very much, they gather food. With the right amount of food, and the right ingredients, a certain miracle of nature can happen.

Honestly, to Yoshis, gender is somewhat up to grabs.

* * *

It was time to depart, and the giants were seeing them off, one on each side of the ship, staring imponently to the sea. Yoshi also saw them to the edge of the island.

"Are… are those eggs _following_ it?" Nami asked.

And indeed, there was a line of 7 eggs following the dinosaur around, all of them white, but the dots in each had a different color, one for each color of the rainbow.

"Wah~" Mario waved the dinosaur goodbye. He liked Yoshies. And this one would survive just fine, he knew.

"The small humans who came here," Dorry said, facing the sea.

"…have a giant reason to move on!" Brogy finished.

"You have protected our honour,"

"…so we will protect your flag!"

"Trust us,"

"…and keep going straight!"

Oh, riddles. Mario thought. He liked riddles.

"Got it!" Luffy nodded. "Always straight!"

From the front of the ship, something emerged from the waters.

"So, you've come,"

"…Island Eater!"

Mario stared at the sea as a giant Cheep Cheep emerged.

"WHAT IS THAT?!" Usopp screamed

"SEA MONSTER!" Nami yelled "QUICK, TURN THE SHIP AROUND!"

"No." Luffy said.

"What?!" Nami yelled back at him.

"We go straight."

"You're crazy! Usopp, turn the wheel!"

Despite his shaking legs, Usopp looked straight at the monster.

"No. We trust the giants."

"You're mad, too!" she cried "Mario, do something sensible for a change!"

"Wah?" Mario pointed at his own face as if asking 'who, me?'

"Of course you!"

"You know, you better give up." Zoro said calmly, from behind her. "All we need to do is trust those giants and be done with it."

Then they were swallowed.

"Too late! What do we do now?" Nami asked between sobs.

"We go straight." Luffy simply said.

"That won't change anything!" she yelled

"Wa~ah." Mario patted her back. This was nothing new. He once spent a whole month living alongside his brother inside their arch-enemies belly. Such is life.

Then suddenly a whole opened on both sides of the fish, and a gust of wind blew the Merry forward towards open sea.

"Yahoo! Told you we could trust them!" Luffy smiled widely at Nami, in a smug told-you-so fashion.

"They can cut even the ocean!" Usopp cried "That is the power of the giants of Elbaf!"

From behind them, there came the boastful yell from both giants, in unison;

"Always straight!"

Followed by the unique laughs each had. In the shore Yoshi, who had watched the whole scene, jumped in joy, the eggs behind him also hopping a little higher than usual.

As the strawhats left the island, they didn't know that, in another 100 years time, after Brogy and Dorry had already decided the result of their duel, the island they were in would no longer be called Little Garden.

It would be known as the second island of the Grand Line; Yoshi's Island, due the sound the friendly reptiles that lived in it made whenever they spoke.

Mario briefly wondered if Sanji would like to know he was, unofficially, a female Yoshi. He decided not to risk it.

* * *

A few days went by in relative peace, which meant Mario had free time to... well, he had free time. He was currently helpind Zoro, and by helping Zoro we mean to say Zoro was asleep on a mystery yellow block on the deck (1), while Mario was laying on the floor next to him staring up at the clouds.

Then things got interesting.

"EVERYONE, HELP, MS. NAMI HAS A FEVER!" Vivi's voice echoed across the ship.

Soon, all were around her bed, sans Zoro who, after being vigorously shaken awake, kept watch outside. Sanji was up front in tears.

"Vivi-chaaaan, is my beautiful swan going to be okay?!"

"Diseases are one of the toughest challenges of the Grand Line. The constant change in the weathers, the wildly different islands… it is not a strike a warrior can block" Vivi shook her head "Even a simple cold could lead to death if not treated. Tell me, is there anyone in this ship with medical knowledge?"

Usopp and Luffy both pointed at Nami.

"This won't do, she can barely talk, much less heal herself!"

"Ah."

They all turned to Mario, who was looking at his pockets for something. He eventually brough up a crumpled old piece of paper with some pasta stains on it, and gave it to Vivi.

"Dr. Mario, M.D." She read out loud. "Wait, you're a what?!"

"Eeeh, you said you were a plumber!" Luffy pointed an accusing finger.

Mario gave a tiny hop.

"Wah!"

"Well yes, I suppose cleaning up pipes _is_ kind of like healing up a body!" Luffy was impressed.

"No it isn't!" Usopp snapped, grabbing the paper and glancing through "…but this does seem official enough."

"Really?!" Sanji looked up from his tears "Fatty, can you save my beautiful goddess?!"

"Please, hurry then!" Vivi ushered Mario. The crew watched expectantly as the plumber doctor walked up to Nami, who was wheezing on the bed, and stroked his mustache.

"Hmm."

He poked her cheeks and took her pulse, before nodding.

"Hm-hm."

He walked to the medicine cabinet grabbed a jar of brightly colored pills, then back to near the bed.

"Hmm…" he stared at the pills, then at Nami, then at the pills.

Then he opened her mouth and started shoving them all down her throat at once.

"LIKE HELL THAT WILL WORK!" Vivi and Usopp yelled.

"THE HELL ARE YOU DOING YOU SHITTY FATSO!" Sanji kicked him away from Nami. Vivi quickly ran over to help her spit the pills as Mario bounced off the other wall and landed on his feet with a flourish.

"Tah~dah~"

"Don't you 'tahdah' us you bastard, are you trying to poison my swan!"

Luffy walked up to Mario and looked right into his eyes.

"Give it to me straight, doc-"

"Luffy, he obviously isn't a doctor at all!" Usopp karate-chopped Luffy.

"Mah!" Mario protested.

"'Mah' your ass, get away from her you butcher!" Sanji got into a fighting position.

"Wa-ha!" Mario gesticulated wildly, Luffy nodded, with his eyes wide open.

"Ah, so you need the pills to kill all the little colored devils dancing inside her!"

The other three people in the room palled and started cold sweating.

"O-oi, that doesn't sound like medicine…"

Sanji was about to snap, thinking about the danger his beloved Nami-swan was if being treated by a crazy witch-doctor-plumber. Seeing the tension rise, Vivi got between them.

"M-maybe he really is a doctor, but aliens work different from us?" She said.

("Eh? I thought you guys didn't believe hi- ouch!" Luffy got interrupted by Usopp elbowing him on the stomach.

"Don't anger the dangerous crazy man, Luffy!"

Oblivious to this, Vivi continued;)

"He did seem to think that would work, I mean."

"…che." Sanji looked away. "Fine. But he still isn't getting anywhere near her anymore!"

Mario crossed his arms. The nerve! In his entire three weeks career, he had never lost a patient!

"Her temperature is getting worse!" Vivi said, looking at the thermometer.

"Is a fever really that bad?" Luffy asked, tilting his head.

"Most people won't survive one week of it." Usopp said plainly.

"If we don't find a doctor soon…"

"Wah!" Mario's protests were ignored.

"…we'll lose her."

Panic descended with those words.

"AAAAH!"

"NAMI IS GOING TO DIIIE"

"MY BELOVED SWAAAAN!"

"QUACK!"

"SHUT UP YOU GUYS, SHE NEEDS TO SLEEP!"

At this, Nami got up.

"AH, SHE'S CURED!" Luffy turned to Mario and shook his hand "THANK YOU SO MUCH, DOCTOR!"

"Vivi…" Nami whispered, "you better… read the newspaper…"

"What? What do you mean?" she grabbed the paper Nami hd been reading before collapsing, and her eyes widened as she read the headlines out loud. "300,000 men of the royal guard have switched sides to join the rebellion in Alabasta!"

"I ho that paper 3 days ago… I didn't say anything because you'd worry without being able to do anything… Do you get where I'm going with that, Luffy?"

"…you are a very kind person, Nami."

"I know."

"B-but, you'll die at this rate!" Usopp said.

"Nah, that thermometer must be wrong… And Mario did just give me some medicine, didn't he...?"

"Ma~h!"

"See…? So, there is no reason to change the route."

With that, she left the room, if a bit unsteadily.

The strawhats looked at each other. Sanji was the first to break the silence;

"I'm going to cook something good for my beloved." he motioned to leave, then turned back and pulled Mario by his suspenders. "And _you_ aren't going to be alone with Nami-chan without me to keep an eye, 'doctor'." He left, taking the doctor plumber along as if he was a baggage. On his part, Mario didn't move.

Outside Nami was alternating between weakly berating Zoro for using a cloud as a reference point instead of the compass, and weakly worrying that there was a storm coming.

She started giving orders to turn the ship around and get back on route before Vivi came out of the room.

"Everyone, I have a request to make." All turned to her. "My country is in disarray, and every second wasted is a risk taken. I need to go back as soon as possible, which is why I will ask you all to return me as soon as possible."

Nami smiled, trembling.

"Right, we promised to take you there… didn't we?"

"…and that is why we will find a doctor as soon as possible, so that Nami-san can take us there quickly!"

Luffy grinned.

"Yeah, without her the Merry wouldn't go nowhere near the fasted speed!"

Then a cyclone burst in the middle of the ocean, out of friggin' nowhere.

"AH, CYCLONE!" Usopp cried.

"THAT IS EXACTLY WHERE THE MOSS-HEAD WAS TAKING US!"

"SHUT UP, HOW SHOULD I KNOW YOU SHITTY COOK?!"

Vivi just stared dumbfounded. They'd be dead if she hadn't just turned the ship on pure instinct, and that was because she was nearly fainting. And to think not two weeks ago 'Miss Wednesday' was making fun of her for being a rookie navigator.

Well, the past is in the past, mistakes were made. Now she'd just have to save her friend.

* * *

(1) Surprisingly confortable, those are.

* * *

**A/N **I sometimes feel like the pacing on this is going too fast. :T

Thanks for the positive reviews so far, guys.


	11. Chapter 11

They were trying to keep themselves busy. By 'they', we refer to Mario and Sanji, both of which stood in the ship's kitchen cleaning teh dishes far past the point they needed to be cleaned. It was a repetitive and silent task, mostly just because the cook needed to do something to avoid having a breakdown over Nami's condition, and he was absolutely _not_ letting that shitty red plumber going anywhere out of his sight. Ever since Mario's attempt of playing doctor with Nami, Sanji had been keeping watch on him 24/7.

On his part, Mario thought the cook was just trying to make friends. He went along with it because he was a friendly kind of dude. He just wished there was a slightly more interesting distraction.

**BANG**

Their heads turned; there was a gunfire sound outside. That would work, he supposed.

"Oi! The hell is going on here!" Sanji dropped the frying pan he was cleaning for the 14th time, and grabbed Mario by his suspenders and dragged him along, as he kicked open the door which led to the deck.

The sight on deck was… well, there were a lot of armed men everywhere.

"Ah, Sanji, we are under attack." Luffy said plainly.

Sanji dropped Mario and lit a cigarette.

"I can see that."

"Wah." Mario got up while rubbing his butt.

"So… 5. There are only 5 of you?" A burly man with an iron jaw walked forth, chewing on a knife, causing the strawhats to cringe. "You have any eternal poses to Drum Kingdom?"

"Never heard of it." Sanji answered plainly.

"Ah, that's too bad. Well then, let's just grab all their treasure and go." The man montioned to his crew.

"You what?" Luffy frowned.

"Ah, but before that," the man walked to the side of the ship and broke a huge chunk of the handrail with his teeth, before chewing on it with gusto.

"OI! Don't just eat our ship!" Luffy was probably angry that someone thought of eating the Merry before him, honestly.

"Don't interrupt lord Wapol when he's enjoying a meal!" one of the subordinates mocked.

Luffy answered by punching him on the face. Mario looked up as everyone got into battle positions. Oh, we are doing this already? He glanced to the gun pointing at his head.

He slowly raised up his arms in surrender, made a gesture at the other Strawhats with his head, and did a 'get a load of those guys' face to his captor, who frowned, but did no motion to shoot.

"Red, what are you doing?" Luffy demanded, punching a ground of pirates into each other with ease.

"He can't dodge bullets." Zoro commented in a bored tone.

"What, really? That is Usopp's level of pathethic." Sanji said, kicking a huge man into the water. "No offense." He added to Usopp, who was hiding from a group of shooters.

"N-n-none taken." He sniper said with his legs shaking.

"Aah… Usopp, can you take out that guy so Red can move?" Luffy politely asked.

"M-m-me?" Usopp looked at the man holding the gun, who was frankly too dumbfounded at the way the events were going to react in any way, his head turning quickly to follow the conversation. He suddenly focused. "R-right, great warrior of the seas…" he muttered, raising the slingshot.

There was a bang and a bullet grazed his arm from behind his hiding place.

"EEEK!" he flinched and let go the Explosive Star…

**_BOOM_**

…which hit the man holding the gun directly between the eyes anyway.

"Shishishi, nice going!"

"I-I hit… I mean, of course I hit, that was all planed!"

"Oi! Red fatty!" Sanji called "You can move now!"

Mario looked at the fallen man and lowered his arms.

Then he immediately jumped to the second floor and ran inside the deposit, slamming the door behind.

"WHAT THE HELL YOU BASTARD!"

"GAHAHAHA! Get a load of that coward!" the invaders mocked

"They saved his ass and he hauled ass just like that!"

Sanji was furious "I swear to god, when I feet my feet on that-"

"Wait another second." Zoro interrupted him, cutting a group of attackers.

"Eh?"

_BANG_

The door exploded, and Mario landed on deck, on one knee, posing menacingly. His hat cast a shadow over his eyes. The attackers and the Strawhats stopped in their tracks to see what was happening.

"Eeeh?!" Luffy stopped at his tracks, staring at him. "Y-you, b-but you can't, I mean, then he…"

"Oi Luffy, you okay there?" Zoro asked, concerned. "You seen him do this sort of thing before."

In the middle of the deck, Mario stood, still posing. The colour of his clothes had changed; all the red of his shirt became white, while the blue of his jeans became red. But most importantly, both his hands were on fire.

Luffy seemed to snap out of it, slapping his own forehead.

"Oooooh, yeah, of course, mystery boxes." He frowned "Don't scare me like that, Red!"

"Eh?" Mario got up, reverting to his non-menacingly-posing silly self, and looked at the other Strawhats, all of whom seemed as confused as him.

"H-hey, you damaged the Merry!" Usopp finally realized, looking at the doorframe.

"Aaah… wah?" Mario apologized, not looking very sorry at all.

"Hey, this ship doesn't taste bad at all!"

"Wait, you are still at it?!"

Wapol had, during all the confusion, paid no attention to what was going on around him, all the while eating chunks of the Merry.

"Wah!" Mario put both his hands together and started forming a fireball, aiming at the man, then Usopp jumped on his neck.

"Nonononono! Merry is made of wood, you idiot!"

"WaAaAa!" Mario quickly threw the fireball overboard, startled.

"Shit, they have a devil fruit user!" one of the pirates yelled. "Lord Wapol, eat him, before he does something else!"

"Whaaat?" the man turned, looking at Mario "This little runt? Won't be enough to even fill the teeth! And look at all that fat!"

"Mah!"

"Bah, whatever, get over here!" with this, the man lounged at Mario, with his mouth open wide. Wider than physically possible, in fact.

Mario got ready to cast some fire, before Luffy calmly pushed him out of the attacks' way, causing 'Lord Wapol' to fly between the two and crash into the background.

"MY LIEGE!" a few soldiers got together to help their lord up. Luffy didn't pay the scene much attention;

"Oi! Red!" he looked annoyed, "I'm the captain here! If some bastard's eating my ship, I am the one who gets to plummet him! Quit trying to hog all the cool fights!"

Mario looked up at him and shrugged.

"Hey! I'm serious, you are not giving this issue enough credit!"

"Uh, Luffy…" Zoro said.

"Like back at the last island, I was all ready to destroy that wax thingy, but then you went and did it yourself!"

"Oi, captain."

"And before that, you and Zoro got to fight all that village and he got to see the rainbow magic before me!" Luffy pouted "Nobody respects my authority in here, nobody at all!"

"Luffy, you've got something on your arm." Zoro said.

"Eh?" Luffy turned to see Wapol had been chewing on his entire left arm for a while now.

"Waffs op wif yoo, is arf do shoo!(1)"

"Hey, I'm trying to have a conversation here." Luffy extended his right arm all the way back, at which moment Vivi burst open a door asking what was going on.

"So get lost!" he punched Wapol off his arm with enough strength to send him flying on the ocean.

"CRAP! THEY HAVE TWO!"

"LORD WAPOL FELL ON THE OCEAN! AFTER HIM!"

The enemies quickly retreated to a submarine, not without cursing the name of all the strawhats (or they would, if they knew the name of the strawhats)

"AN ISLAND!" Luffy cheered, knowing there ought to be a doctor nearby, "A WINTER ISLAND! SO MUCH SNOW!" he laughed, before shivering. "Also, it's so cold!"

"ONLY NOW YOU NOTICE IT!" Sanji and Usopp, both wearing heavy winter clothing, snapped at Luffy, who still wore nothing but his normal open shirt, shorts and sandal.

"And what's up with you!" Usopp turned to Mario, who was wearing the same clothes he always did, with the exception they were still oddly-coloured. (2) They weren't as bad as Luffy's, but definitely not snow-gear either.

The plumber, however, seemed not to be bothered by the climate. Like, at all. It seemed the same obliviousness that made him able to function properly while covered in solid wax also gave him immunity to harsh weather.

"O-oi, Mario, make yourself useful!" Luffy demanded.

"Hmm? Ah!"

Seconds later Mario has a fireball in his hands, and Usopp and Luffy were crouched around him as if he were a bonfire.

"Ah~ you might be a lousy doctor, but you are a damn good heater~" Usopp commented blissfully.

"Speaking about that, who's looking for a doctor? Or rather, first we need to find anyone at all." Zoro said.

"I'll go!" Luffy raised his hand.

"And **we** are going too!" Sanji grabbed Mario by his suspenders to prevent any attempt from him trying to run off and 'cure' Nami. Usopp let a yelp when this action made Mario drop the fireball, and jumped on its path before it could damage the Merry. The others ignored the man lying down with a burn mark on the back of his winter vest to continue discussing plans.

Before they managed to get anywhere, however, a voice interrupted them.

"Stop right there, pirates."

The crew turned, startled, to find out they had been surrounded by men wielding rifles on both sides of the river they were currently sailing in.

"Turn back now before we shoot. This is your last warning."

"Please! We don't mean any trouble!" Vivi yelled back "Our friend is sick, we need help!"

"You think we are idiots?! You are not getting anywhere near the village!"

"It's true!" the princess begged.

"Even if it is, who cares if a pirate's friend lives or dies?! Serves them right for associating with scum!"

This sent Sanji over the edge…

"Oi! You shitty bastards better not badmouth my Nami-swan!"

…and as he went into a battle position, Vivi held him back…

**BANG**

…only for herself to be shot in his place.

Mario's right eye twitched. A princess had been hurt under his watch. A _princess_ had been _hurt_ under _his watch_.

"Wah… WAAAAH!" he started to dash with his little chubby legs,

"VIVI!" Being followed by Luffy, who was about the only person madder than he was in this whole affair.

As he jumped, the princess weakly grabbed both his leg and Luffy's shirt, causing the rubber man to stop and the plumber to facevault into the deck.

"WAIT! You two! It just grazed me!"

"But you're still hurt!"

"Luffy… you are still too impulsive… if you beat them up, do you think any of them will ever help Nami?"

Luffy stared at her for a moment, before nodding and bowing down with her to beg.

"Yosh! All better now!" Zoro showed Mario and Carue his feet, which he had clumsily stitched back together after nearly cutting every muscle which held them together. Mario would offer to fix them up too, but the princess gave him very explicit orders not to heal anyone. Also, he was forbidden to enter the medicine closet. Also, to leave the ship. Sanji wanted to keep him as far away from Nami as possible for the time being, to which Mario felt slightly annoyed. It's tiny devils! Tiny dancing devils inside her! Good grief.

So he was ordered to stay on the ship. Currently serving as a heater for Carue, as Zoro meditated on the snowstorm. It was kind of boring.

High up the mountain, on the Witch's castle, the tiny shadow of the Monster stood on top of a box, staring out of the window at the approaching storm.

"He's been away for a while…"

The Witch said nothing.

"…and he was still injuried…"

The Witch remained silent.

"…and the snow's getting worse."

At this, the Witch chuckled.

"I thought you hated that bastard?"

"I-I do! I just don't want you to have worked for nothing!"

"Heh. Stop wasting your time then and get ready, it is time for our rounds."

"Yes…"

The figure gave another glance at the snow before jumping down. Looking closely, the box he had stood on was yellow, with an interrogation mark on its sides.

* * *

"Oh, these? They fell from the sky one of these days. They say the Witch did it." Dalton, the apparent acting leader of the village, gestured to a pile of yellow boxes he had on a corner. "It was a bit of a light show, then this weird soft rocks and not-so-soft boxes come hurling at us. Some of the gossipers assume the Witch was trying to hurt us so she'd have an excuse to heal us and get paid."

"She sounds bad." Usopp commented while sipping on some hot chocolate.

"Worse than a pirate." Luffy added, doing the same.

"Yeah, but if it was so, it didn't work. Nobody got hurt, at least. And we didn't know what to do with them, so we are just using them as doorsteps or, you know, bricks."

"Uh… have you tried hitting-"

"Lu…ffy…" Nami's weak voice came from the nearby bed.

"Ah, what is it, Nami?!"

"Don't say… any…thing… about… the boxes… we'll… take the burden… from their hands…"

Her dazed, half-closed and unfocused eyes had become two dazed, half-closed and unfocused Belli.

* * *

On the village, a man was walking back with a few groceries from a store. People looked at him funny and whispered as he walked past, but he ignored them.

Then a particular whisper caught his attention;

"…and Dalton is brought over that group of pirates…"

P-p-p-p-p-p-p-PIRATES?!

He tightened his grip on the groceries and accelerated his pace. He knew enough about life to know when trouble was brewing, and he wasn't nearly as brave as he wanted to be, and he needed to pay out his debt.

* * *

(1) "What's up with you?! It's hard to chew!"

(2) It seems whatever he did also fixed all the rips it had from previous battles, as well.


End file.
